See the book by Christopher Hitchens - 'The Trial of Henry Kissinger'
£15/$22 published by Verso.
Hitchens' chilling account of this global 'luminary''s involvement in Indochina,
Bangladesh, Chile, Cyprus, East Timor and Washington DC terrorist attacks
presents what seems like a watertight case for Kissingers's prosecution.

Using a
barcode
system is a great way to increase productivity in your office. A
barcode
printer is first used to print out unique barcodes for each product.
Then a system of
barcode
readers scans are used to track product movement through a warehouse.
Barcode scanners quickly can
identify what the product is and where it is going. A type of barcode
called a two dimensional
barcode can hold several times the amount of information that a standard
barcode can.

07Jun11 - The Right Change's blog - Inform yourself
on the Bilderberg Group

A prominent member of Switzerlands largest political party has called
upon federal authorities to arrest Henry Kissinger as a war criminal if he
attends the 2011 Bilderberg conference of global power brokers which is set
to begin on Thursday at the Hotel Suvretta House in St. Moritz.

Swiss Peoples Party representative Dominique Baettig wrote a letter
to the General Prosecutor of the Swiss Federation in which he asked, In
the name of Cantonal Sovereignty and independence, but especially of the
Justices independence from executive power  may it be Federal
or Cantonal  I ask you to check abroad for Arrest Warrants delivered
by various Courts, Judges and also for all valid criminal complaints against
the persons who were, amongst others, cited as mere examples in my (enclosed)
letters to Mrs. Simonetta Sommaruga, Federal Counselor and Mrs. Barbara Janom
Steiner, Cantonal Counselor and of course, to arrest them before diligent
extraditions.

Baettig is no fringe figure, hes the equivalent of a US Congressman,
representing the Canton of Jura on the National Council of Switzerland. His
party, the Swiss Peoples Party, is the largest party in the Federal
Assembly, with 58 members of the National Council and 6 of the Council of
States.

Baettigs letter also calls for the apprehension of George W. Bush and
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, but neither are likely to be attending
the conference. However, Kissinger is a regular Bilderberg attendee and is
almost certain to be present in St. Moritz.

Kissinger, National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State for President
Nixon and President Ford, has been accused of being complicit in a number
of war crimes in Indochina, Bangladesh, Chile, Cyprus and East Timor. Numerous
activists have attempted to arrest him over the years under the Geneva
Conventions Act.

In The Trial of Henry Kissinger, author Christopher Hitchens documents how
Kissinger personally approved bombing campaigns that resulted in thousands
of civilian casualties as well as signing off on the use of the deadly chemical
Agent Orange. United States General Telford Taylor, the former chief prosecuting
officer at the Nuremberg trials, stated that Kissinger committed war crimes
by giving the nod to bomb Vietnamese villages during the war.

Although Bilderbergs primary confab will take place in St. Moritz,
other associated meetings will also occur in Zurich and Geneva. Unlike the
small group of independent journalists who will travel to the location to
do the job that the castrated establishment media refuses to undertake,
Bilderberg elitists can rely on private jets and helicopters to transport
them between the different locations.

In recent years, Bilderberg luminaries have decried the increasing number
of demonstrators and independent journalists who descend on the scene of
each annual meeting, which is the primary reason why members will be hopping
around to different locations within the small country of Switzerland to
escape the glare of reporters and the unwanted attention of protesters.

Claims by apologists that Bilderberg is merely a talking shop that has no
influence on setting policy have been vehemently debunked in recent years.
Bilderberg chairman Étienne Davignon last year bragged about how the
Euro single currency was a brainchild of the Bilderberg Group.

A meeting in June in Europe of the Bilderberg Group- an informal club
of leading politicians, businessmen and thinkers chaired by Mr. Davignon-
could also improve understanding on future action, in the same
way it helped create the Euro in the 1990s, he said, reported the EU
Observer in March 2009.

The foundations for the EU and ultimately the Euro single currency were laid
by the secretive Bilderberg Group in the mid-1950s. Bilderbergs
own leaked documents prove that the agenda to create a European common market
and a single currency was formulated by Bilderberg in 1955.

As we first reported in 2003, a BBC investigative team were allowed to access
Bilderberg files which confirmed that the EU and the Euro were the brainchild
of Bilderberg.

During an interview with a Belgian radio station last year, former NATO
Secretary-General and Bilderberg member Willy Claes admitted that those who
attend the conference are mandated to implement decisions that are formulated
during the confab within their respective spheres of influence.

VATICAN CITY - Over the course of his long and controversial career, former
U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has had many titles. Now he reportedly
has one more - adviser to the Pope.

According to the Italian newspaper La Stampa, Pope Benedict XVI has invited
the 83-year-old former adviser to Richard Nixon to be a political consultant,
and Kissinger has accepted.

Quoting an "authoritative" diplomatic source at the Holy See, the paper reported
Nov. 4 that the Nobel laureate was asked at a recent private audience with
the Holy Father to form part of a papal "advisory board" on foreign and political
affairs.

As the Register went to press, Kissinger's office was unable to confirm or
deny the report. La Stampa stood by its story, although the Italian press
is less rigorous in its authentication of stories as is the United States
Press.

If true, there is speculation on which issues Kissinger would advise the
Holy Father. Relations with Islam, Palestine and Israel, and Iraq - Kissinger
has been critical of the conduct of the war but opposes a quick withdrawal
- are likely to be high up on the agenda.

It has also been speculated that, in view of the Muslim hostility to Benedict's
recent Regensburg speech, Kissinger might provide advice on dealing with
an increasingly fractious Islamic world.

Furthermore, like the Pope, Kissinger has analyzed the challenges of
globalization and might provide advice in this area as well.

"The idea [of his appointment] sounds like a good one," said veteran Vatican
journalist Sandro Magister. "But so would it also be to consult other experts
on geopolitics with different orientations."

As possible expert advisers with different perspectives, Magister listed
Catholic philosopher and former diplomat Michael Novak; Bernard Lewis, professor
of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University; and foreign policy experts
such as Charles Kupchan and G. John Ikenberry.

Expert Advice

The recruitment of Kissinger would not be unprecedented. Experts from a variety
of disciplines, including the realm of economics, politics and philosophy,
are regularly invited to advise popes and Vatican officials on current affairs.

Pope John Paul II was close friends with Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Polish-born
national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, partly because both
had a common Polish heritage (though this caused the Soviets to suspect the
Vatican of "fixing" the election of Karol Wojtyla, which occurred during
the Carter presidency).

Similarly to John Paul and Brzezinski, Benedict and Kissinger are close in
age and were both born in Bavaria (a Jew, Kissinger and his family fled Nazi
Germany before World War II).

In recent years, other figures invited to share their expertise with the
Holy See have included Paul Wolfowitz, a former President Bush adviser and
now president of the World Bank; Michel Camdessus, the former director of
the International Monetary Fund; American economist Jeffrey Sachs and Hans
Tietmeyer, former governor of Germany's central bank.

The pontifical academies also regularly call on academic luminaries as
consultants, such as Nobel laureates Gary Becker, the successor to Milton
Friedman at the Chicago School of Economics, and Italian medical researcher
Rita Levi-Montalcini.

In comments to the Register, Novak said that "many, maybe most" of these
experts are not Catholic, but that the Pope "can call in certain experts
he wants to talk to, or hear a paper from, with discussion in a small group."

Novak said this is true of both Benedict XVI and John Paul II, whom he described
as having "very curious and searching minds."

Any appointment of Kissinger is likely to cause some unease, however. One
Iranian radio station is already reporting the news as a "papal-Jewish
conspiracy," while others object to the Pope consulting with someone who
has been widely identified with the realpolitik school of political analysis,
an approach that places practical considerations before morality.

'Different Voices'

Yet like Pope John Paul II, Benedict XVI is winning recognition for
his intellectual ability and his capacity to discuss international issues
with a diverse spectrum of world figures, ranging from the Dalai Lama to
the late atheist polemicist Oriana Fallaci and to Mustapha Cherif, an Algerian
Muslim philosopher whom he met this month.

"Such an appointment would really show Benedict XVI to be contrary to his
media image, as someone who's willing to listen to other voices not in accordance
with his views," said one Holy See diplomat about the reported enlistment
of Kissinger as a papal adviser. "It's always helpful to hear different voices
offering different views."

Editor's Note: The arrest by Chile of former military strongman Augusto Pinochet
is a human rights victory. But complicent in the rise of Pinochet and his
crimes, the writers say, is former Nixon advisor Henry Kissinger and other
U.S. officials.

The Chilean government has arrested Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who led a brutal
military coup in 1973 and ruled the country with an iron hand until 1990.
The United States should now follow suit by prosecuting Henry Kissinger,
President Richard Nixon's former national security advisor, for breaking
U.S. and international law by helping foment the coup that brought Pinochet
to power.

Before Pinochet, Chile had a well-deserved reputation as one of the most
vibrant democracies in the world. It had a democratically elected president
and a Congress just as we do. It had a wide range of political parties from
the far right to the far left, all of which participated in the political
process. It had numerous newspapers, magazines and radio stations that together
represented the views of people across the political spectrum. All of its
citizens, including illiterates, had a right to vote.

Pinochet, with Kissinger's help, changed all that.

The military junta Pinochet led dissolved Congress, outlawed political parties
and the largest labor union in the country, censored the press, banned the
movie "Fiddler on the Roof" as Marxist propaganda, publicly burned books
("on a scale seldom seen since the heyday of Hitler," according to the New
York Times), expelled students and professors from universities, designated
military officers as university rectors and arrested, tortured and killed
thousands who opposed the regime.

Among those who died in the coup and its aftermath were: Salvador Allende,
Chile's democratically elected president; Victor Jara, its most famous folk
singer; Carlos Prats, the commander in chief of the Chilean armed forces
until the coup plotters forced him out of office; Jose Toha, a former vice
president; Alberto Bachelet, an air force general who opposed the coup; and
two North American friends of ours, Charles Horman and Frank Terrugi.

The Pinochet regime was condemned for torturing political prisoners and for
other human rights abuses by the United Nations, the Organization of American
States, Amnesty International and many other respected international
organizations. Among those tortured was a 24-year-old young man who, according
to the Wall Street Journal, "was stripped naked and given electrical
shocks...They started with wires attached to his hands and feet and finally
to his testicles." Newsweek magazine wrote on March 31, 1975, "Each day Chileans
are picked up for interrogation by the secret police. Some are held for weeks
without charge, many are tortured, a few disappear altogether."

Chile, in sum, became a nightmare society. Even when Pinochet finally gave
up power in 1990 to an elected government, he continued to dominate the country's
politics as commander in chief of the military.

Only recently has the country demonstrated a determination to face its past
head-on and bring those responsible for murder and torture under the Pinochet
regime to justice, including the ex-dictator himself. Indeed, up until only
a short time ago, Pinochet in Chile used to be like Kissinger in the United
States. He was the Teflon man. No charges against him could be made to stick.

Three events provided Chileans with the resolve to take on the former tyrant.
The first was his arrest in England in 1998 on a warrant issued by a Spanish
judge charging him with human rights abuses. The second was the publication
by the news media of documents indicating that he enriched himself at the
expense of his own people in a variety of illicit ways. The third was a report
by a government-sponsored commission detailing the torture of 45,000 people
that took place under his regime.

So now, the 89-year-old ex-dictator -- his former friends deserting him in
droves, his cultivated image of the tough but honorable savior of his country
in tatters -- is under house arrest in his own country. He's trying to avoid
prosecution by claiming he is too old and too feeble-minded to face a trial.
What about Kissinger?

Innumerable reports in this country, beginning with a 1975 U.S. Senate document
titled, "Covert Action in Chile," have made it clear that Kissinger was
responsible for directing the CIA and other intelligence agencies to destabilize
the Allende government. Kissinger's motivation was to prevent what he considered
a communist government from gaining a foothold in Latin America. "I don't
see why we need to stand idly by and let a country go communist due to the
irresponsibility of its own people," he said after Salvador Allende was elected
president.

Now, Pinochet's arrest reminds us that Henry Kissinger and others in our
country who are responsible for undermining democracy and condoning human
rights abuses need to be held accountable for their crimes. Until that happens,
the rest of the world has a right to be incredulous when our leaders proclaim
they want to spread democracy and human rights abroad.

Paul Cantor is a professor of economics at Norwalk Community College in
Connecticut. He lived in Chile from 1970 to 1973. Roger Burbach also resided
in Chile and is the author of "The Pinochet Affair: State Terrorism and Global
Justice" (Zed Books, 2003).

The chief Latin American expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, the
nation's pre-eminent foreign policy club, has quit as a protest, accusing
the council of stifling debate on American intervention in Chile during the
1970's as a result of pressure from former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger.

Kenneth Maxwell, a senior fellow for inter-American affairs at the council,
announced his resignation in May 13 letters to James F. Hoge Jr., the editor
of Foreign Affairs magazine, where Mr. Maxwell had reviewed a book on American
involvement in Chile, and to Richard Haass, president of the council's board.

"There is a question of principle at stake here," Mr. Maxwell wrote to Mr.
Hoge. "It was made abundantly clear to me, as you know, that there was intense
pressure on you, on Foreign Affairs and on my employer, the Council on Foreign
Relations, from Henry Kissinger and others, to close off this debate about
accountability and Mr. Kissinger's role in Chile in the 1970's."

Mr. Kissinger is traveling, said an assistant, Jesse Incao, and could not
be reached for comment.

Officials at the Council on Foreign Relations strenuously denied that Mr.
Kissinger, whose friends include some of the council's biggest donors, had
exerted any pressure, directly or indirectly, to silence Mr. Maxwell on this
issue.

The roots of the current dispute date back to last winter, after Mr. Hoge
invited Mr. Maxwell to write an extended review of "The Pinochet File: A
Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability" by Peter Kornbluh (New
Press), a book that re-examines the American role in helping to unseat Salvador
Allende, the socialist president who died during the military coup that brought
the brutal regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet to power. The book is based on
25,000 United States government documents that were declassified in recent
years.

Mr. Maxwell's essay largely summarized the unresolved questions surrounding
American actions in Chile, mentioning three issues in particular: the 1970
assassination of a Chilean general, René Schneider; the September
1973 coup against Allende; and the assassination of Orlando Letelier, Allende's
former foreign minister, in September 1976.

The review, though critical of Mr. Kornbluh's book in some respects, said
that it confirmed "the deep involvement of the U.S. intelligence services
in Chile prior to and after the coup."

The review outraged William Rogers, the former assistant secretary of state
for Latin American Affairs under Mr. Kissinger and a vice president of his
consulting firm, Kissinger Associates, who wrote a lengthy response in the
following issue of Foreign Affairs.

"There is, in short, no smoking gun," Mr. Rogers wrote. "Yet the myth persists.
It is lovingly nurtured by the Latin American left and refreshed from time
to time by contributions to the literature and Mr. Maxwell's review of that
book."

Mr. Maxwell fired back, "William Rogers overreaches." He added, "To claim
that the United States was not actively involved in promoting Allende's downfall
in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary verges on incredulity."

After the exchange, Mr. Hoge said, Mr. Rogers approached him once again,
saying that Mr. Maxwell's response to his letter had raised new charges that
he felt entitled to address. Specifically, Mr. Rogers felt he and Mr. Kissinger
were being accused of complicity in the Letelier assassination, Mr. Hoge
recalled.

Mr. Maxwell said that he was not accusing the men of complicity but rather
of failing to stop the campaign to assassinate opposition figures abroad.
He cited an August 1976 order from Mr. Kissinger to ambassadors in South
America, to warn governments there that the United States would not countenance
political assassinations on its territory. At least in Chile, that order
appears not to have been delivered, nor was it insisted upon. The next month,
Letelier's car was blown up by Chilean secret service agents on a Washington
street.

Mr. Hoge said he had told Mr. Rogers that if he stuck to the historical issue,
the journal would not run any response from Mr. Maxwell this time.

"He promised me that I would have the last word and that Maxwell was shut
off," Mr. Rogers said in an interview this week.

Mr. Maxwell agreed he had said he wouldn't need to respond as long as there
were no personal attacks, but he changed his mind after seeing the actual
letter.

Mr. Hoge still said no.

Mr. Hoge said he was not reacting to any private pressure from board members
or elsewhere, but felt that the time had come to put an end to a debate that
was going nowhere.

"I thought both of them had had a good go at their feelings of the Pinochet
book," Mr. Hoge said.

Whether or not there were any hidden strings pulled to give Mr. Rogers the
final word, as Mr. Maxwell claims, the dispute underscores an intense competition
under way to shape the way that history is told, particularly regarding the
United States involvement in Chile, as more and more documents touching on
Mr. Kissinger's legacy are released.

"The key is the suppression of debate on foreign policy by a major figure
in a major foreign policy magazine," said Mr. Maxwell, who is now headed
for Harvard University as a senior fellow at the David Rockefeller Center
for Latin American Studies.

Nor was Mr. Kornbluh pleased. He, too, had tried to submit a letter, but
was also turned down.

"I thought that Foreign Affairs was being grossly unfair to me as the author
of the book that was the foundation for the entire debate, and to Ken Maxwell,
who was obviously their own analyst and their own reviewer," Mr. Kornbluh
said.

The incident has sparked dismay in some quarters. A letter to Foreign Affairs
from Latin American experts who are members of the council severely criticized
the way the prestigious journal handled the dispute, particularly in denying
Mr. Maxwell the right to reply. The decision, it said, "denied readers an
opportunity to weigh competing views, contrary to the journal's policies
and traditions."

This time, Mr. Hoge said, the dissent would appear in the letters column
of Foreign Affairs' next issue.

Declassified US files expose 1970s backing for junta

Henry Kissinger gave his approval to the "dirty war" in Argentina in the
1970s in which up to 30,000 people were killed, according to newly declassified
US state department documents.

Mr Kissinger, who was America's secretary of state, is shown to have urged
the Argentinian military regime to act before the US Congress resumed session,
and told it that Washington would not cause it "unnecessary difficulties".

The revelations are likely to further damage Mr Kissinger's reputation. He
has already been implicated in war crimes committed during his term in office,
notably in connection with the 1973 Chilean coup.

The material, obtained by the Washington-based National Security Archive
under the Freedom of Information Act, consists of two memorandums of
conversations that took place in October 1976 with the visiting Argentinian
foreign minister, Admiral César Augusto Guzzetti. At the time the
US Congress, concerned about allegations of widespread human rights abuses,
was poised to approve sanctions against the military regime.

According to a verbatim transcript of a meeting on October 7 1976, Mr Kissinger
reassured the foreign minister that he had US backing in whatever he did.

"Look, our basic attitude is that we would like you to succeed," Mr Kissinger
is reported as saying. "I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to
be supported. What is not understood in the United States is that you have
a civil war. We read about human rights problems, but not the context.

"The quicker you succeed the better ... The human rights problem is a growing
one ... We want a stable situation. We won't cause you unnecessary difficulties.
If you can finish before Congress gets back, the better. Whatever freedoms
you could restore would help."

One day earlier, October 6 1976, Adml Guzzetti was told by a senior state
department official, Charles Robinson, that "it is possible to understand
the requirement to be tough". Mr Robinson is also reported as saying that
"the problem is that the United States is an idealistic and moral country
and its citizens have great difficulty in comprehending the kinds of problems
faced by Argentina today".

"There is a tendency to apply our moral standards abroad and Argentina must
understand the reaction of Congress with regard to loans and military assistance.
The American people, right or wrong, have the perception that today there
exists in Argentina a pattern of gross violations of human rights."

The US ambassador to Argentina, Robert Hill, had been putting pressure on
the regime to stop human rights abuses. But after Adml Guzzetti returned
from Washington, Mr Hill wrote from Buenos Aires to complain that the Argentinian
foreign minister had not heard the same message from Mr Kissinger.

Adml Guzzetti had told the ambassador that Mr Kissinger had merely urged
Argentina to "be careful", and had said that if the terrorist problem could
be resolved by December or January, "serious problems could be avoided in
the US". Mr Hill wrote at the time: "Guzzetti went to US fully expecting
to hear strong, firm, direct warnings on his government's human rights practices.
He has returned in a state of jubilation, convinced that there is no real
problem with the USG [government] over that issue."

The then US assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, Harry
Shlaudeman, who attended both the Kissinger and the Robinson meetings with
Adml Guzzetti, replied to Mr Hill: "As in other circumstances you have
undoubtedly encountered in your diplomatic career, Guzzetti heard only what
he wanted to hear. He was told in detail how strongly opinion in this country
has reacted against reports of abuses by the security forces in Argentina
and the nature of the threat this poses to Argentine interests."

However, as the newly released documents make clear, Adml Guzzetti was correct
to believe that the regime had, in effect, been given carte blanche by the
US government to continue its activities.

In a previously released cable, Mr Hill reported how his human rights concerns
were dismissed by the Argentinian president, Jorge Videla: "[The] president
said he had been gratified when Guzzetti reported to him that secretary of
state Kissinger understood their problem and had said he hoped they could
get terrorism under control as quickly as possible.

"Videla said he had the impression senior officers of the USG [government]
understood situation his government faces, but junior bureaucrats do not.
I assured him this was not the case. We all hope Argentina can get terrorism
under control quickly - but to do so in such a way as to do minimum damage
to its image and to its relations with other governments. If security forces
continue to kill people to tune of brass band, I concluded, this will not
be possible."

The revelations, which were also announced at a conference in Argentina
yesterday, confirm suspicions at the time that the regime would not have
continued to carry out atrocities unless it had the tacit approval of the
US, on which it was dependent for financial and military aid.

The junta, which ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, fell after the military's
defeat in the Falklands war. During its period in power an estimated 30,000
people may have been arrested, tortured and killed. Many bodies have never
been found.

An investigation into those crimes has begun in Argentina.

Mr Kissinger has been asked by the Chilean authorities to give evidence in
connection with human rights abuses during the 1973 Chilean coup and the
support he gave to the former dictator, General Augusto Pinochet. He is likely
to be asked to do the same in Argentina.

He reportedly does not travel abroad without consulting his lawyers about
the possibility of his arrest.

DETAILS of the intimate relationships between independent board members and
Hollinger International continued to emerge yesterday as it transpired that
the publisher of The Daily Telegraph supported a magazine connected to Henry
Kissinger and Richard Perle.

Hollinger has been handing more than $200,000 (£116,000) a year for
an unknown period to the National Interest, a foreign affairs magazine. Mr
Perle, Dr Kissinger and Lord Black of Crossharbour offer editorial advice
and the latter two sit on the editorial board.

The magazine is produced through a partnership with Hollinger and the Nixon
Centre, but the newspaper publisher has never disclosed its full relationship
to the publication.

Nixon Centre is a research institution of which Dr Kissinger is honorary
chairman and Lord Black a board member.

Hollinger says it is reviewing all business investments to ensure that they
are appropriate. It has stopped supplying about $375,000 a year to the
International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based research institute
of which Lord Black is a member.

Lord Black stepped down as chief executive of Hollinger International last
month after it emerged that he and other executives, and the parent company
Hollinger Inc, had received $32.5 million in non-compete payments not been
approved by the board.

Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford Lied to the American
Public about East Timor

Title: Documents Show US Sanctioned Invasion of East Timor Author: Jim Lobe,
(IPS)

Faculty evaluator: Student researcher: Connie Lytle,

Corporate media coverage: San Diego Union, A-29, 12/12/01

The release of previously classified documents makes it clear that former
President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in a face-to-face
meeting in Jakarta, gave then President Suharto a green light for the 1975
invasion of East Timor.

According to documents released by the National Security Archive (NSA), in
December of 2001(the 26th anniversary of Indonesias invasion of East
Timor) Suharto told Ford during their talks on December 6, 1975 that, "We
want your understanding if it was deemed necessary to take rapid or drastic
action [in East Timor]." In a previously secret memorandum, Ford replied,
"We will understand and not press you on the issue. We understand the problem
and the intentions you have." Kissinger similarly agreed, with reservations
about the use of U.S. made arms in the invasion. Kissinger went on to say
regarding the use of U.S. arms, " It depends on how we construe it, whether
it is self-defense or is a foreign operation," suggesting the invasion might
be framed in a way acceptable to U.S. law. Kissinger added, "It is important
that whatever you do succeed quickly the U.S. administration would be
able to influence the reaction in America if whatever happens after we return
[to the U.S.]. If you have made plans, we will do our best to keep everyone
quiet until the President returns home."

For years Henry Kissinger has denied that any discussion of East Timor took
place in Jakarta. The newly released dialogue between the three adds
significantly to what is known about the role the US played in condoning
the Indonesian invasion. The dialogue was part of a batch of documents on
U.S. policy effecting East Timor obtained through the National Security Archive.
Indonesia invaded East Timor the day after Ford and Kissinger left. As many
as 230,000 East Timorese died as a result of Indonesia's invasion and the
23-year occupation of the country. As much as one third of the population
died as a result of starvation, disease, caused by counter-insurgency operations
carried out by the Indonesian army from 1976 to 1999. According to Amnesty
International, East Timor represents one of the worst cases of genocides
in the 20th century.

Under international pressure Indonesia allowed a plebiscite in 1999, in which
East Timorese overwhelmingly voted for independence. After the vote
Jakarta-backed militias rampaged the territory, burning and looting the country.
The UN Security Council authorized an Australian-led international force
to restore order. East Timor is now an independent country.

By Patrick Bishop in Paris - 31/05/2001 - Daily Telegraph

HENRY KISSINGER, the former US Secretary of State, left Paris yesterday after
declining to answer the questions of a French magistrate seeking information
about political killings in Chile.

The American embassy told Judge Roger Le Loire that he should ask the State
Department for details of American knowledge of the murder and disappearance
of political opponents - including five French nationals - under the Pinochet
regime after the 1973 coup.

Mr Kissinger was visiting Paris when police delivered a summons to the Ritz,
where he was staying, asking him to present himself at the Palais de Justice.

The embassy later sent a letter to M Le Loire saying other obligations had
prevented the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize winner from replying to the request
and that he should direct his questions to Washington through official channels.

A State Department spokesman said it would pass on to the French authorities
what information it had about the disappearance of French citizens during
the post-coup era.

Maitre William Bourdon, representing families of the missing French nationals,
said Mr Kissinger - Secretary of State from 1973-77 - had a duty to tell
what he knew. M Le Loire is pursuing a campaign to discover the fate of the
five French people who went missing in the years after Gen Pinochet came
to power.

One, Jean-Yves Claudet-Fernandez, disappeared during an operation codenamed
"Condor" in which Chile and other South American regimes co-operated to eradicate
political opponents. M Le Loire says the Americans knew about the plan.

His own lonely impunity is rank; it smells to heaven. If it is allowed to
persist then we shall shamefully vindicate the ancient philosopher Anacharsis,
who maintained that laws were like cobwebs; strong enough to detain only
the weak, and too weak to hold the strong. In the name of innumerable victims
known and unknown, it is time for justice to take a hand.
http://www.trialofhenrykissinger.org

In an event interrupted by protesters, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
told a Minneapolis audience Thursday night that President Bush's leadership
and the war in Iraq have the potential to be significant turning points for
the better in world history.

Before a sold-out crowd of 1,700 at the Minneapolis Convention Center, Kissinger
predicted that in the near future, Syria would moderate its anti-American
conduct and its support for terrorism, that Iraq would become a democracy
and that a breakthrough might occur in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Kissinger, 79, whose family fled Nazi Germany when he was a teenager, said
that "anybody who has experienced a totalitarian state can never forget what
America has meant to the world." He noted that the U.S. system is a product
of unique historical experiences, difficult to duplicate or to transplant
into Muslim societies where secular democracy has seldom thrived.

He was optimistic nonetheless about a U.S.-fostered transition to democracy
in Iraq because, Kissinger said, "anyone who has seen the president in action
knows he will fulfill the goals he has set for himself."

After he was introduced by Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Kissinger gave a talk full
of praise for Bush, which was delivered just as Bush was preparing to declare
the end to major combat in Iraq from aboard an aircraft carrier in the Pacific.
Bush's military actions in both Iraq and Afghanistan were "essential in light
of the challenges we faced" after the Sept. 11 attacks, Kissinger said.

"I am convinced history will record that President Bush saved not only America's
security but the world's prospects for progress by the courage with which
he faced those challenges," he said.

Kissinger spoke at the annual dinner of the Center of the American Experiment,
a conservative Minneapolis think tank, which has brought in big names for
its annual banquet before, including Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev,
Colin Powell and former President George Bush.

Kissinger, 79, was national security adviser (1969-75) and secretary of state
(1973-77) under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He now chairs an
international consulting firm based in New York.

Last year, President Bush nominated Kissinger to be chairman of a commission
to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks. Kissinger accepted, then later declined
on the grounds of possible conflicts with his consulting work.

Kissinger's speech was interrupted three times by protesters in the audience
who tried to read a statement accusing him of war crimes during his years
in power. Police quickly escorted them out. No arrests were made. Kissinger
joked briefly about the protesters after each interruption, then resumed
his remarks.

Before the banquet, about 75 protesters greeted arriving guests with chants
of "Henry Kissinger, you can't hide. We charge you with genocide."

Dave Bicking, 52, a Minneapolis auto mechanic, along with his 17-year-old
daughter was one of seven protesters ejected from the dinner. He said he
has followed Kissinger's career since college and he "pretty much despised
the guy from the beginning."

He considers Kissinger a war criminal based on his role as an architect of
U.S. policy in Vietnam, Chile, East Timor and other matters. Kissinger's
policies and actions share the responsibility for more than 1 million deaths,
Bicking said.

"So when I heard that Kissinger was coming to town, I thought: 'This guy
can't just be honored as a hero and go about his business like that.' If
justice was done, he should be tried, convicted and behind bars. But if that
can't happen, at least he shouldn't be able to have a fancy fundraising dinner
in peace."

In the full text of the statement, the protesters noted that Kissinger is
wanted for questioning in connection with international human rights cases
by courts in several countries. Few in the audience could hear the protesters,
who tried to direct some of their remarks to the attendees, including Pawlenty,
accusing them of supporting Kissinger's alleged crimes.

Sister Jane McDonald from Minneapolis followed some attendees to the door
saying, "He's a war criminal. You should know the truth about Kissinger."

A few people accepted the fliers she tried to give them, but most ignored
her.

Sarah Janecek, a Republican analyst who attended the event, said she was
a little surprised by the protesters and some of the signs such as one that
read "Killionaires for Kissinger," but shrugged them off. "The guy has served
our country, he's retired, so what's the point?" she said.

Tickets ranged from $150 for a single seat to $10,000 for a table of 10 seats.
That price included opportunities for guests to attend a pre-dinner reception
with Kissinger and to be photographed with him. The center declined to divulge
how much Kissinger was paid for his hourlong talk.

Ex-Reagan aide to head civilian administration

Paul Bremer, a former US diplomat and terrorism expert, will be Iraq's civilian
administrator, it was reported yesterday.

The appointment is seen in Washington as a victory for the secretary of state,
Colin Powell, in his battle with the Pentagon for control of Iraq's future.

Mr Bremer, who was Ronald Reagan's adviser on counter- terrorism and now
runs a crisis consultancy, will oversee the Pentagon's man in Baghdad, the
retired general Jay Garner, who is expected to leave Iraq in the next few
months.

A spokesman at Mr Bremer's Marsh Crisis Consulting office would not comment
on yesterday's press reports. The White House is expected to announce his
appointment before the end of the week.

Gen Garner, a personal friend of the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld,
is controversial because of his links to the arms industry and his public
statements in support of Ariel Sharon's government in Israel.

He made it clear that he saw his role as head of the office of reconstruction
and humanitarian aid (ORHA) as transitory. But it was unclear until yesterday
whether the new US administrator in Iraq would be chosen by the Pentagon
or the state department.

However, the role of civilian administrator may prove to be a poisoned chalice
as Iraqis grow restive under foreign occupation. The killing of at least
15 demonstrators by US troops during protests in Falluja this week illustrate
how quickly the occupation can turn bloody.

Gen Garner's British deputy at ORHA, Major-General Tim Cross, said that getting
the Iraqi ministries back on their feet was progressing faster than they
had hoped for, and that ORHA could be handing over to an Iraqi interim
administration soon.

"I hope we will be out of here by June," he said.

Six of the opposition parties involved in talks on the future of Iraq in
London have been discussing a strategy since Wednesday. They will meet other
groups and representatives in a national council at the end of the month
to choose an interim administration.

ORHA's view is that the feared humanitarian crisis has not occurred, the
damage to infrastructure is minimal, and the Iraqis have been quick to begin
organising themselves to revive their ministries.

Mr Bremer will then focus on the political transition. He is reputed to be
a consummate diplomat, having served 23 years in the state department. He
then worked in Henry Kissinger's global consulting practice before setting
up his own business in 2001.

WASHINGTON, April 30 /PRNewswire/ -- With thirty-two years of significant
experience in foreign policy in both the public and private sectors, Christine
Vick has joined The Cohen Group as Vice President.

Since 1996, Ms. Vick has been a partner at Andreae, Vick & Associates,
LLC, an international consulting firm based in Washington, D.C. The firm
provided its clients with advice and assistance in regard to policy issues
and political dynamics in markets around the world. Ms. Vick's client work
included extensive dealings in China and Turkey geared to problem solving
and developing commercial opportunities.

Ms. Vick began her foreign policy career at the State Department in 1971,
and began her work with then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1973.
Four years later, she accompanied Dr. Kissinger to the private sector, and
continued on for a 15-year association with him as Vice President of Kissinger
Associates. During this period, Ms. Vick worked extensively with multinational
clients in various sectors and senior officials in the U.S. government.

From 1991 until 1996, Ms. Vick served as Senior Policy Advisor at the
international law firm of Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy as well
as the Managing Director of Powell Goldstein International Consulting.

In addition to her full-time position as Vice President of The Cohen Group,
Ms. Vick serves on the board of directors of the American Turkish Council
and is Chairman of the Eisenhower Institute. She is a member of the advisory
boards of the Center for International Studies at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, her alma mater, and ChinaOnline, LLC.

Also joining The Cohen Group from the former Andreae, Vick & Associates
are Cameron Turley, who previously served at the State Department's Foreign
Service Institute and speaks Mandarin Chinese, and Taite Bergin, who formerly
worked at the International Trade Administration at the Commerce Department
and speaks Spanish and Japanese. Mr. Turley will be an Associate with the
Group, and Ms. Bergin will be an Executive Assistant.

Ms. Vick's arrival follows last month's addition of retired four-star General
Joseph W. Ralston, the former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
who just completed a distinguished 37-year Air Force career by serving as
the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces. General Ralston has joined The
Cohen Group as Vice Chairman.

About The Cohen Group:

The Cohen Group opened its doors in January 2001 with the objective of helping
multinational clients identify and pursue opportunities around the world.
A strategic alliance with Piper Rudnick, the national law firm specializing
in business, real estate and technology, helps The Cohen Group maintain the
unique ability to provide clients with truly comprehensive tools for
understanding and shaping their business, political, legal, regulatory, and
media environments. Since its start in early 2001, The Cohen Group has developed
a team of skilled professionals of diverse backgrounds who serve a wide array
of clients in the US, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. For more information,
see www.cohengroup.net

NEW YORK, March 10 (Reuters) - Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill,
who resigned under pressure from the Bush Administration last December, was
named special advisor to Blackstone Group, the privately held New York investment
bank, the firm said.

O'Neill, treasury secretary for two years and former chief executive of aluminum
producer Alcoa Inc (AA), will advise Blackstone on operational and related
issues to its portfolio companies, Blackstone said. O'Neill will also join
Blackstone's advisory board.

Blackstone didn't say which of its portfolio companies that O'Neill may advise
it on. Blackstone has invested in more than 60 companies and has significant
investments in American Axle, Allied Waste, Graham Packaging and many others.

The O'Neill appointment is the latest in a string of former government officials
to join private buyout firms, which raise investor capital to buy, build
and sell companies.

Carlyle Group, a rival buyout firm based in Washington, is perhaps best known
for a roster of advisers that includes former President George Bush; Frank
Carlucci, the former defense secretary; John Major, the former U.K. prime
minister, and others.

However, other buyout firms have also tapped well-known names to help open
doors for new business opportunities or give advice on the management of
their companies. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger last year joined
Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst on European acquisitions, while Clayton Dubilier
& Rice signed up former General Electric chief executive Jack Welsh.

Blackstone said O'Neill was tapped mainly for his management abilities. Prior
to his 12 years at the helm of Alcoa, O'Neill was with International Paper
Co. (IP), where he became president in 1985.

"His track record as an extremely successful CEO will be of immense value
to our firm," said Stephen Schwarzman, Blackstone chief executive, in a
statement.

In the first major shake-up of the Bush Administration economic team, O'Neill
resigned in early December along with Bush chief economic advisor Larry Lindsey
amid criticism that the president's policies were failing to reverse the
economy's deterioration.

O'Neill sustained criticism for his blunt views which regularly sent currency
markets roiling, and generated controversy by touring Africa last year with
Bono, lead singer of Irish rock band U2 and critic of the International Monetary
Fund and World Bank.

Blackstone is one of the largest private equity funds, with about $24 billion
under management in alternative assets including hedge, buyout and real estate
investments. It also advises companies on mergers, acquisitions and
restructurings. REUTERS

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Under fire for potential conflicts of interest, former
U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has abruptly resigned as chairman
of an independent commission investigating the government's failure to prevent
the September 11 attacks.

"This is a moment of disappointment for me, of course. ... My hope is that,
by the decision to step aside now, the joint commission can proceed without
further controversy," Kissinger said on Friday in a letter to President George
W. Bush, who tapped him for the high-profile job.

The announcement, which followed the resignation of former Democratic Sen.
George Mitchell as vice chairman of the commission, threw the September 11
investigation into disarray.

Kissinger's selection had sparked considerable controversy, both because
of his policy-making role during the Vietnam War and the bombing of Cambodia,
and because he is now a high-priced private international consultant. A new
documentary called "The Trials of Henry Kissinger" alleged Kissinger was
an international war criminal.

The 10-member commission was charged with investigating possible intelligence,
aviation security, immigration or other policy lapses related to the September
11 attacks that killed more than 3,000 people.

The Bush administration initially opposed the commission, arguing a congressional
investigation was better equipped to preserve national security secrets.
Victims' families led a public campaign and pressured Bush to back down.

He appointed Kissinger, one of the most controversial American statesmen
of the last half-century, to serve as chairman on November 27.

In his letter of resignation, Kissinger, 79, said he was confident he could
have resolved potential conflicts of interest with his consulting firm, Kissinger
Associates, but was concerned that "the controversy would quickly move to
the consulting firm I have built and own."

"I have, therefore, concluded that I cannot accept the responsibility you
proposed," said Kissinger, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and secretary of state
under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

Kissinger has stated publicly there are no conflicts between the commission's
work and clients at his New York-based consulting service.

But congressional Democrats had demanded that he fully disclose his business
clients, and relatives of the victims asked for information about his business
interests to see if he had any potential conflicts.

"In the end, he (Kissinger) would've been willing and was going to make his
client list public. But he reached the conclusion that even after he had
done that, people still would've said 'it's not enough; you must stop making
a living; you must sever your ties to all your clients; you can no longer
have Kissinger Associates,'" a senior White House official said.

NEW CHAIRMAN SOUGHT 'QUICKLY'

Bush promised to "work quickly" to name a new chairman to the commission
"whose mission will be to uncover every detail and learn every lesson of
September 11."

"It is with regret that I accept Dr. Kissinger's decision to step down as
chairman of the National Commission to investigate the events of September
11, 2001 and the years that led up to that event," Bush said in a statement.

"As I stated at the time of his appointment, Dr. Kissinger is one of our
nation's most accomplished and respected public servants. I thank him for
his willingness to consider serving his country once again."

Kissinger called White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card on Friday afternoon
and told him he had made his mind up to step down. "This came as a surprise,"
a White House official said.

Earlier this week Mitchell, the former Senate Democratic leader, announced
he would not serve on the panel, citing time pressures. Democrats have
recommended former House International Relations Committee chairman Lee Hamilton
to take Mitchell's place.

When he signed legislation creating the commission, Bush urged its members
to expedite their work, due to be completed within the next 18 months, and
directed them to "follow all the facts wherever they lead."

But a senior administration officials conceded: "The resignations of Senator
Mitchell and Secretary Kissinger means the commission is not getting off
to as quick a start as the president would've hoped."

Democrats have named five representatives to the September 11 commission,
including Hamilton as vice chairman. Republicans still must name three more
members.

In a statement issued late on Friday, Hamilton said Democratic members of
the commission "support complete disclosure and we will each comply fully
with the requirements."

"The only time I ever interviewed Kissinger, he told me three lies in
the first sentence he spoke, each word. Dropping. From. His. Mouth. Like.
A. Stone. He lies with more authority than anyone I have ever known."

Plus, Bush hawks and Christian right go batty over Islam

[If this author really believes that the pope, the knights templar etc. who
were behind the crusades were Christians she needs her head examined - they
were bloodthirsty, looting murderers, not Christians]

Good grief. I turn my back for 10 minutes, and they bring back the old War
Criminal.

Two generations of Americans have come to adulthood since Henry Kissinger
last held political power, so I need to explain that War Criminal is not
an affectionate sobriquet: The man is, in fact, a war criminal -- wanted
for questioning in Chile, Argentina and France (concerning French citizens
who disappeared in Chile). He cannot travel to Britain, Brazil and many other
countries because they cannot guarantee his immunity from legal proceedings.

In addition to his role in the Chilean coup that brought the regime of Gen.
Pinochet to power, Kissinger is wanted for questioning about the international
terrorist network called Operation Condor, which conducted killings, kidnappings
and bombings in several countries, including this one: the 1976 bombing in
Washington, D.C., that killed a noted Chilean dissident and his companion.

Kissinger's most notorious crime was the secret bombing of Cambodia and Laos
during the Vietnam War. William Shawcross argued persuasively in his book
"Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia" that the Cambodian
bombing unleashed the Khmer Rouge on that country -- which, if true, certainly
ups Kissinger's body count.

He is also a notorious liar. He has lied repeatedly to Congress, the press
and the public; he is a toady to power and a lackey of the Establishment,
and for many years now the hireling of despotic regimes around the world.
Old Cover-Up Kissinger, the man who double-crossed the Iraqi Kurds... just
the man to lead an independent inquiry into 9-11.

The cynicism of this insult to the families of those who died on 9-11 is
just flabbergasting. We knew the Bush administration opposed the whole idea
of an independent inquiry, but this adds supreme insult to injury.

The cover-up has already started: Kissinger insists he need not reveal the
identities of his client regimes. He said law firms are not required to reveal
the names of their clients. That's a two-lie answer, no record for Henry
the K. He doesn't run a law firm, he runs an international consulting business.
And in the second place, law firms are indeed obliged to publicly register
their lobbying clients. The only time I ever interviewed Kissinger, he told
me three lies in the first sentence he spoke, each word. Dropping. From.
His. Mouth. Like. A. Stone. He lies with more authority than anyone I have
ever known.

For those of you who are interested in learning more about our most famous
living war criminal, I recommend Seymour Hersh's book "The Price of Power:
Kissinger in the Nixon White House," which was widely attacked but no factual
error was ever found in it. Also, Christopher Hitchens' "The Trial of Henry
Kissinger" is a definitive argument for the war criminal charge.

If you want to get something good out of this cynical ploy, you can at least
haul out your old Tom Lehrer records and tool down memory lane. Lehrer, the
great social satirist, stopped writing the day they gave Henry Kissinger
the Nobel Peace Prize.

Meanwhile, our neo-con hawks have moved from the bellicose to the bizarre.
Ken Adelman, a member of Bush's Defense Policy Board, has joined several
other hawks in direct attacks on Islam. Calling Islam a peaceful religion
"is an increasingly hard argument to make," announced Adelman. "The more
you examine the religion, the more militaristic it seems. After all, its
founder, Mohammed, was a warrior, not a peace advocate like Jesus."

Another member of the Pentagon advisory board, Eliot Cohen, says, "Nobody
would like to think that a major world religion has a deeply aggressive and
dangerous strain in it -- a strain often excused or misrepresented in the
name of good feelings. But uttering uncomfortable and unpleasant truths is
one of the things that defines leadership."

The Christian right has gone completely batty on the subject: Rev. Jerry
Falwell called Mohammed "a terrorist," Rev. Franklin Graham said Islam is
"evil" and so forth.

Let's see, where does that leave Christianity, the religion of peace and
love, founded by the Prince of Peace?

Among the more notable Christian crimes were the unbearably bloody Crusades,
the Thirty Years War, the Inquisition, innumerable pogroms, regular slaughter
of Protestants, counter-slaughter by Protestants, genocide against Native
Americans (featuring biological warfare), slavery, the Holocaust, ethnic
cleansing, Northern Ireland... and the list goes on and on and on.

People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Especially when they
are making bellicose statements and beating the war drums relentlessly for
what may be an unnecessary war.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Henry Kissinger on Thursday promised relatives of Sept.
11 victims that his business interests would not conflict with his new role
as chairman of a panel investigating the attacks, leaders of two relatives'
groups said.

The assurances came as the White House and congressional Democrats clashed
on whether the former secretary of state must disclose his business clients
to serve on the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks. Kissinger was appointed
by President Bush.

It was not clear how much information Kissinger was willing to disclose or
whether it would satisfy lawmakers.

Stephen Push, a leader of Families of Sept. 11, said Kissinger outlined
procedures he was considering for the commission's 10 members to disclose
potential conflicts of interest. Push declined to provide details, but said
it would not require Kissinger to release a list of his consulting firm's
clients.

Kristen Breitweiser of September 11th Advocates described the procedures
outlined by Kissinger as ``a suggestion. If he is able to do the suggestion,
I would be satisfied.''

Push said relatives still want Kissinger to abide by any legal requirements
for disclosure. ``We're not suggesting this as an alternative to following
the law,'' he said.

Push and Breitweiser were among 11 relatives who met with Kissinger in his
New York office. Kissinger did not return messages seeking comment.

The commission will investigate events surrounding the attacks, examining
issues including aviation security, immigration and U.S. diplomacy. It will
build on a congressional inquiry into intelligence failures that was completed
this week.

Some politicians and commentators have called on Kissinger to sever ties
with his firm because of possible conflicts. The panel's original vice chairman,
George Mitchell, resigned from the commission Wednesday, partly because of
similar pressures to quit his law firm.

Senate Democrats claim all commission members, including Kissinger, are required
to submit financial disclosures that would reveal potential conflicts. That
view was supported by a report issued last week by Congress' research arm,
the Congressional Research Service.

But the White House claims Kissinger, as Bush's sole appointee, is not required
to submit a report. It says federal law does not require presidential appointees
to submit disclosures if they are not drawing salaries, as is the case with
Kissinger.

A second Congressional Research Service report, though, said all members
of the commission - including a presidential appointee - would be bound by
Senate ethics requirements. That report was released Thursday by the office
of Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs
Committee.

The dispute is the latest involving a commission that will begin its work
early next month. Family members and congressional Democrats have questioned
whether the Bush administration wants an honest evaluation of the attacks,
with the report coming out less than six months before the 2004 presidential
election.

Negotiations setting up the commission were bogged down by disputes over
the commission's makeup and rules, with lawmakers and the White House accusing
the other of trying to manipulate it for political purposes.

Relatives have criticized Senate Republican leader Trent Lott, R- Miss.,
for choosing former Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash., as one of his two appointees
to the commission. They consider Gorton too close to the aviation industry.

Lott has promised to consult with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a close ally
of the families, in choosing his second appointee. The families and McCain
have been pushing for former Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H., who led an advisory
group that warned of U.S. vulnerability to terrorist attacks before Sept.
11.

Push said Lott is refusing to appoint Rudman. A Lott spokesman did not respond
to messages.

But Push said the relatives were encouraged by the meeting with Kissinger.

``I think we started to develop a good working relationship,'' he said.

Saturday, November 30, 2002 - The New York Times

In naming Henry Kissinger to direct a comprehensive examination of the U.S.
government's failure to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks, President George W.
Bush has selected a consummate Washington insider. Kissinger obviously has
a keen intellect and vast experience in national security matters. Unfortunately,
his affinity for power and the commercial interests he has cultivated since
leaving government may make him less than the staunchly independent figure
that is needed for this critical post. Indeed, it is tempting to wonder if
the choice of Kissinger is not a clever maneuver by the White House to contain
an investigation it long opposed.

It seems improbable to expect Kissinger to report unflinchingly on the conduct
of the government, including that of Bush. He would have to challenge the
established order and risk sundering old friendships and business relationships.

, in theory, should provide the definitive account of how a raft of government
agencies - including the White House, Central Intelligence Agency and Federal
Bureau of Investigation - left the United States so vulnerable to terrorist
attack. That final reckoning is overdue and so far absent from the narrower
inquiries done by Congress and individual agencies. It is essential to ensuring
that past mistakes are not repeated.

The new inquiry will be undone if the 10-member panel is hesitant to call
government organizations and officials to account. There can be no place
for the kind of political calculation and court flattery that Kissinger practiced
so assiduously during his tenure as President Richard Nixon's national security
adviser and secretary of state. Nor is there any tolerance for the kind of
cynicism that Kissinger applied to the prosecution of the Vietnam War.

The commission will be made up of five Republicans and five Democrats. Choosing
its remaining members and staff director wisely will also be vital to its
success. They must be fiercely independent and unafraid to challenge some
of Washington's most powerful institutions. We were mildly encouraged to
hear Kissinger say that he would "accept no restrictions" on the commission's
work. To deliver on that promise, Kissinger must start by severing all ties
to Kissinger Associates, the lucrative consulting business he has built up
during the past two decades. As a consultant, Kissinger offered not just
his own foreign policy expertise, but his famously easy access to the powerful
and well connected.

Not long after Bush announced the appointment of Kissinger on Wednesday,
Democratic congressional leaders picked one of their brethren, former Senator
George Mitchell, to serve as vice chairman. Like Kissinger, Mitchell has
great experience and an understanding of how the world works - and is not
known for rocking established institutions.

The commission offers both men a chance for the kind of career-crowning legacy
that many public personages dream of. But that would require rising above
Washington's usual hedging and horse-trading. If they succeed, they could
help the United States recover from the grievous wounds of Sept. 11 and make
sure the country is never so vulnerable again.

"Diplomats said they could not yet answer the so-called "Kissinger question":
what would happen in an ICC prosecution of a former US government official
- the defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, for example...."

Ian Black in Brussels Tuesday October 1, 2002 The Guardian

The EU came under furious criticism last night after seeking to end a row
with the US by agreeing terms for giving American citizens immunity from
prosecution by the new International Criminal Court.

Under heavy pressure from Washington, London persuaded its partners to accept
a compromise allowing member states to sign individual immunity agreements
with the US, a retreat from its previous united opposition to US immunity.

Britain, Italy and Spain are now expected to go ahead and make separate
agreements with the US.

But Britain, whose diplomacy was crucial to the new approach, was attacked
by Amnesty International for "betraying" its commitment to the new court."US
pressure has paid off," said Dick Oosting, director of its EU office.

"The EU has allowed the US to shift the terms of the debate from legal principle
to political opportunism."

Foreign ministers meeting in Brussels approved a plan which lets member
governments agree not to extradite American soldiers or officials to the
ICC if Washington guarantees that US war crimes suspect will be tried at
home.

Germany said it was unhappy with the deal but signed it anyway. Sweden and
other countries were reluctant but acknowledged that a united EU position
was better than none.

The court, due to start work in next year, will try individuals for genocide,
war crimes and human rights abuses.

The US, which fears its personnel overseas could face politically motivated
charges, opposes the court and has lobbied other countries to sign immunity
agreements.

Yesterday's deal was the subject of bitter haggling which underlined European
concern about US unilateralism and the EU's difficulty in agreeing a common
position.

Per Stig Moeller, the foreign minister of Denmark, which holds the EU presidency,
insisted that no concessions had been made. "If individual states stay within
these red lines... the court will not be undermined."

Britain was singled out for criticism by Human Rights Watch. "The British
role was both ill-considered and damagingly effective," its spokesman Richard
Dicker said.

"The British operate as if one more concession will appease those in the
Bush administration who are sworn to destroy this court. It represents a
betrayal by the Blair government of its earlier support for the ICC."

Amnesty said: "The political impact of this decision will be to bolster the
US administration's efforts in its relentless campaign to undermine the
effectiveness of the ICC."

Under the terms agreed the US will have to drop its demand for a blanket
exemption and limit immunity to individuals sent abroad by the government.

Diplomats said they could not yet answer the so-called "Kissinger question":
what would happen in an ICC prosecution of a former US government official
- the defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, for example - accused of atrocities
in a future war against Iraq, especially one not fought under UN authority.

The conditions agreed by the 15 can apply either to new bilateral agreements
or existing agreements on extradition and judicial cooperation.

Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, insisted that Berlin would
not make an agreement with the US, and sought to accentuate the importance
of the court.

"This is very important because the Milosevics and Pinochets of tomorrow
will be brought to justice," he said.

Britain had warned the rest of the EU that their failure to reach agreement
could endanger UN peacekeeping operations, because the US might veto them
in the security council.

Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, told colleagues that though agreeing immunity
arrangements was "not an ideal step to take", the highly sensitive issue
had to be resolved.

So far 139 states have signed the ICC's founding treaty and 80 have ratified
it. But the Bush administration withdrew its signature in April.

Brussels was furious when Romania, a candidate for EU membership, keen to
win US support for its Nato membership, agreed never to take US citizens
to the court.

By Barbara Amiel - Tue Sept 24 - 2002

What is going on at the New York Times? In a front-page news story on August
16, the Times managed to change Henry Kissinger into a dove on the issue
of military action against Saddam Hussein instead of the hawk he actually
is.

The two reporters who wrote the story took an op-ed piece written by Kissinger
for the Washington Post four days earlier - in which he argued that the reasons
for war against Iraq were strong enough to justify an imperative for
pre-emptive action - and twisted this into a caution against such action.
Not easy.

To justify running this story on page one for two consecutive days, the reporters
linked it to an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal on August 15, written
by Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser to George Bush Senior.
Scowcroft is a legitimate member of the Republican anti-war faction.

Using his piece as a news-hook, the reporters cobbled together a story headlined
Top Republicans break with Bush on Iraq strategy. There was nothing
newsworthy in the article except for the presence of Henry Kissinger as a
break-away Republican.

The new-look Henry K was so blatant a piece of deception that, on August
19, the Wall Street Journal parted with its tradition of keeping quiet about
its competitors editorial policies and published a leader with a damning
indictment of the tendentious claims of the New York Times,
suggesting that the paper keep its opinions on its editorial page.

More than 100 years ago, the New York Times, under owner Adolph Ochs, adopted
the slogan: All the news thats fit to print. Ochs and his
descendants built up so formidable a franchise that by this century it looked
like the paper might actually be able to fulfil that promise physically.
But critics are now asking if the New York Times only prints news it considers
ideologically fit.

Newspapers often have agendas - issues and values - they want to promote.
Readers can decide if the agenda is legitimate - so long as they know what
it is. Having an agenda is not wrong, but pretending you dont when
you do is. Even worse is to falsify facts, report selectively, or take quotes
out of context to serve your agenda.

For most of its 106 years under the stewardship of the Ochs-Sulzberger family,
the Times had an agenda that was pretty obvious. It was a pro-Republican
newspaper until the election of Franklin D Roosevelt. Though the paper criticised
Roosevelt between elections, from that point on they switched to the Democratic
Party and became a newspaper that pretty much reflected the liberal values
that have long dominated New York City political elites.

By 1972, the paper had reached a position where it could endorse George McGovern
in the presidential election. McGoverns platform had such highlights
as the distribution of Americas wealth to the population by giving
$1,000 handouts to every citizen.

The paper became a staunch opponent of the war in Vietnam and of President
Nixon. It supported what is generally conceded as the most inept American
presidency in the past 80 years, that of Jimmy Carter. In a word, the New
York Times cantered at full tilt to the Left.

This was reflected in its op-ed pages, columnists and staff choices. In recent
years, two men, Abe Rosenthal and John Vinocur, were both ideally qualified
to be editor of the Times but were considered ideologically unsuitable. The
newspaper became increasingly politically correct even under the benign and
commercially brilliant stewardship of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, grandson of
Adolph Ochs.

In 1996, Arthur (known as Punch Sulzberger) resigned and his
son, Arthur Pinch Sulzberger, took over. Staff held their breath.
Would Pinch be as hands-off as Punch? The answer was pretty much yes, though
Pinch was more modern or sensitive to gender and race issues
than his old-fashioned liberal dad.

But Pinch had a very particular idea of where he wanted the New York Times
to go: out went Abe Rosenthal and in came a new team headed by executive
editor Howell Raines, a vehement Left-wing columnist from decades back.

Partisanship is not necessarily wrong for a newspaper. The tradition of parti
pris papers is strong in Europe and well known in Britain. Raines kept the
ideologically unpredictable columnist William Safire and the op-ed pages
reflect a sprinkling of differing views.

What has been happening at the Times is far more ominous than just veering
to the support of one party or one ideology. The tradition of the New York
Times was to be the paper of record for its liberal readers. And in this
voyage, the Times has mirrored the sad story of American liberalism, which
is largely the story of liberalism derailed.

There is a type of liberalism, pioneered in America, which tries to be fairer
than fair. But trying to be better than fair is like trying to bend over
backwards to be straighter than vertical or defining objective
as being neutral between good and evil. That path leads straight to moral
equivalence.

In the 1980s, this pseudo objectivity and fairness
expressed itself in an impartiality between totalitarian systems and the
free world. Currently, it expresses itself in the notion that Palestinian
actions against civilians have the same moral legitimacy as those of Israelis
against the intifada.

Impartiality may be a virtue but, as columnist George Jonas wrote in the
Ottawa Citizen, to be impartial between tyranny and democracy the better
to protect human rights is like being impartial between wood and copper the
better to conduct electricity. In plain words, its nonsense.

Super-liberalism has led the Times into a lot of nonsense. The Israeli government
is routinely described in its news stories as following hardline
policies while no such negative description is given to governments such
as those of Saudi Arabia or the Palestinian Authority. Indeed, the Saudis
are routinely described as moderates in news stories or
pro-West allies of America - even as they fund al-Qaeda
and their official newspapers spout virulent hatred of the West.

This double standard has long been evident in the pages of the New York Times,
but it finally burst through to even the most undiscerning reader when, after
a demonstration by several hundred thousand Jews in New York supporting Israel,
the Times chose to illustrate its account with a front-page photograph of
pro-Palestinian Arabs holding up a banner. The outcry following this (and
the cancellation of some subscriptions) resulted in an apology - sort of
- from the Times.

In domestic policy, the same standards apply. The New York Sun (in which
my husband is a passive investor) has a website at www.smartertimes.com which
notes daily the double standards of the New York Times.

I highly recommend the site, though I sometimes disagree with its reasoning.
(For example: I found it unappetising to make innuendoes about pecuniary
motives for Brent Scowcrofts stand against military action in the Middle
East. His arguments do not convince me, but they are respectable arguments
from an accomplished former general and public official.)

It was the smartertimes site that pointed out the distortion of the then
senator John Ashcrofts remarks on abortion. Ashcroft was quoted in
the New York Times as saying that the American people and a majority of Congress
want to eliminate this gruesome procedure from our nations hospitals
and clinics.

In fact, he was not speaking about abortion in general as the Times said,
but partial-life abortions. Once again, the New York Times had to correct
the error.

But though the paper occasionally gets caught out - when its distortions
are truly egregious - similar instances occur daily on its news pages, which
are increasingly dedicated to the implementation of a New Left agenda
domestically and internationally.

Important stories from the Middle East are buried or played down. Dubious
domestic sources are given legitimacy, such as the Reverend Al Sharpton,
a demagogue whose criticisms of racial policies are printed without mention
of his involvement in and support to this day of the false charges of rape
brought by a black woman against fictional white aggressors.

Super-liberalism has sub-liberal consequences. Because super-liberalism has
no reality behind it, the truth has to be distorted. The news has to be
re-written or spun to suit the agenda if it involves topics the paper considers
of vital ideological importance, such as the unseating of President George
W Bush, the prevention of war against Iraq, the creation of a Palestinian
state without regard to the security of Israel.

Ultimately, in such a wonderland, the super-liberals have to rise to the
defence of suicide bombers. Day has to become night. Henry Kissinger must
be made into an anti-Bush dove.

And that is what is wrong with the New York Times. It pretends that it has
no agenda but distorts news stories to fulfil it. I dont think Adolph
Ochs would recognise this New York Times as the legitimate standard bearer
of All the news thats fit to print.

But George Orwell would see what has been going on. Perhaps the slogan should
be re-written: All the Newspeak fit to print.

This article was published in London Daily Telegraph and Daily Times is
reproducing it to give its readers a glimpse of the opposing viewpoint.

Documents revive debate on U.S. role

BY TIM JOHNSON - Posted on Fri, Aug. 30, 2002 - Miami Herald

WASHINGTON - For all his renown as one of the world's leading voices on
international affairs, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's twilight
years are not passing so easily. At age 79, his legacy is the subject of
scrutiny, protests, international legal disputes and even a federal lawsuit.

Now, there are even more questions, thanks to the release by the State Department
earlier this month of 4,667 official U.S. documents relating to the ''dirty
war'' in Argentina from 1976 until 1983 in which military death squads killed
thousands of suspected leftists.

The new batch of declassified cables has revived debate that surged last
year with publication of The Trial of Henry Kissinger, a polemical book by
British writer Christopher Hitchens, who suggested that the 1973 Nobel Peace
Prize laureate should be tried for war crimes.

The newly released documents reveal that Argentine military officers believed
they had the green light from Washington -- and perhaps Kissinger -- to carry
out the brutal campaign.

The hounding of Henry Kissinger is the result not only of declassified U.S.
documents but also global trends empowering judges to reach across frontiers,
a desire by aggrieved relatives to seek justice, and perhaps a dose of
publicity-seeking by his many ideological opponents. And it has forced Kissinger
to watch his step abroad out of concern that a judge might order his arrest:

 A month later, police arrived at his Paris hotel to serve him
with questions from a French judge. Chile's Supreme Court, meanwhile, also
wants answers from Kissinger about a 1973 coup.

''His movements are somewhat restricted because of the legal actions being
taken against him,'' said Riordan Roett, director of Western Hemisphere studies
at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

SUGGESTIONS REJECTED

Kissinger's office in New York City referred calls to William Rogers, his
lawyer, who rejected any suggestion that Kissinger gave a green light to
human rights abuses in the Southern Cone countries. Rogers said ''a cabal
of Hitchens-minded people'' is attacking Kissinger to ``create some notoriety
for themselves.''

''It's show business. This stuff is utterly tendentious. There has never
been a credible objective analysis that he has committed an international
crime,'' Rogers said.

Rogers, who served as assistant secretary of state for Latin America under
Kissinger, dismissed suggestions from Kissinger critics that he supported
efforts to crush armed leftists in the Southern Cone region as part of the
great battle against the Soviet Union. In both Chile and Argentina, Soviet-
or Cuban-backed guerrillas carried out rebel campaigns.

``I don't think this [region] was terribly important in the Cold War context.
As Henry once said, `Chile is a dagger pointed straight at the heart of
Antarctica, Rogers said.

The newly released documents contain a handful of accounts of how Argentine
military officers interpreted Kissinger's views of their campaign to crush
leftist subversives.

Argentina's military, which held power from 1976 until 1983, snatched between
9,000 and 30,000 people off the streets, leaving them ''missing'' and inflicting
scars that still affect the nation.

One document from Oct. 19, 1976, noted that Argentina's foreign minister
returned from Washington ''in a state of jubilation,'' convinced after meeting
Kissinger, who was then secretary of state in the Ford administration, that
U.S. officials simply wanted the Argentine terror campaign over quickly.
The impression left the Argentine official ''euphoric,'' the cable said.

Kissinger left his post in early 1977, when President Carter came to office
and declared that U.S. relations with foreign partners would depend on their
human rights record.

Even out of office, Kissinger had an impact in Argentina, the diplomatic
cables show. As the Carter administration sharpened its attack on Argentina's
military junta for its atrocities, Kissinger traveled to Buenos Aires as
''the guest'' of the dictator, Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla, to view the 1978
World Cup soccer tournament, the U.S. ambassador wrote in a June 1978 cable.

According to the cable by Raul Castro, a former governor of Arizona who was
then the U.S. ambassador, Kissinger held an ''off the cuff talk'' at one
point with prominent foreign affairs experts.

ENVOY CONCERNED

''He explained his opinion [that] GOA [government of Argentina] had done
an outstanding job in wiping out terrorist forces. But also cautioned that
methods used in fighting terrorism must not be perpetuated,'' the cable said.

''My only concern,'' Ambassador Castro concluded, 'is that Kissinger's repeated
high praise for Argentina's action in wiping out terrorism and his stress
on the importance of Argentina may have gone to some considerable extent
to his hosts' heads.

``Despite his disclaimers that the methods used in fighting terrorism must
not be perpetuated, there is some danger that Argentines may use Kissinger's
laudatory statements as justification for hardening their human rights stance.''

The latest round of declassification has renewed bitter feelings among some
retired senior State Department officials with long-held beliefs that Kissinger
signaled to the Argentine military that he did not disapprove of their
repression, as long as it was done speedily.

''I think he was complicit,'' said Patricia Derian, who was an assistant
secretary of state for human rights under President Carter. ``He was in a
position to influence them greatly -- both in and out of office. Mistreatment
of citizens by a government was given the nod.''

Rogers, the Kissinger attorney, called the suggestion of complicity ''appalling''
and inaccurate. ``What was done down there was done by the Argentines. We
weren't controlling it.''

In his speech in London on April 24, Kissinger referred obliquely to the
notion that he might be obligated to respond some day in a court of law for
his foreign policy record.

''No one can say that he served in an administration that did not make
mistakes,'' Kissinger said. ``The issue is whether 30 years after the event,
courts are the appropriate means by which determination is made.''

Kissinger is also facing a passel of legal troubles related to the 1970-1973
rule in Chile of Salvador Allende, the first socialist president elected
there in a popular vote, and U.S. support for an army coup against him that
installed a military dictatorship that ruled until 1990.

LAWSUIT FILED

Last Sept. 10, two surviving sons of a Chilean military commander slain in
1970 filed a federal lawsuit in Washington seeking $3 million from Kissinger
and then CIA Director Richard Helms for allegedly supporting the military
squad that carried out the assassination.

The commander, Gen. Rene Schneider, was no friend of Allende but adamantly
opposed a U.S.-supported military revolt to block his ascension to power.
Schneider was shot on his way to work on Oct. 22, 1970, two days before Congress
was to confirm Allende in the presidency.

An attorney for Schneider's sons, René and Raúl, said the suit
is based on declassified U.S. documents released over the past two years
that identify Kissinger as coordinator of a ''Track II'' plan in 1970 that
gave $35,000 to the squad after it carried off the Schneider slaying.

''Our case shows, document by document, that he was involved in great detail
in supporting the people who killed Gen. Schneider, and then paid them off,''
attorney Michael Tigar said.

In a separate case, the Chilean Supreme Court has sent a series of questions
to the U.S. State Department, in what is called letters rogatory, seeking
responses from Kissinger about the death of Charles Horman, an American killed
in the days following the 1973 coup that toppled Allende. The U.S.-supported
coup brought Gen. Augusto Pinochet to power.

The State Department said it responded to the Chileans last week but declined
to disclose the content of the response.

In still a third matter, a criminal judge in Chile said he might investigate
Kissinger in relation to Operation Condor, in which military dictatorships
in the Southern Cone exchanged information to help each other kidnap and
kill hundreds of political opponents.

If declassified documents have caused problems for Kissinger, it may not
be over. When Kissinger left office in early 1977, he took with him tens
of thousands of pages of transcripts of telephone conversations.

In February, Kissinger was pressured to turn those over to the National Archives
and Records Administration, and they are under review.

Der Spiegel, 22.7.2002

Rene Schneider (60), Programme director of the Chilean public television
station TVN is the son of the Chilean army general who was killed in 1970
with the support of the CIA. Last September he filed a civil suit against
Kissinger for the murder of his father.

Spiegel: The new International Criminal Court has just been set up in The
Hague; could Kissinger be tried there?

Schneider: I believe Kissinger and the US Government have to explain a lot
of things that happened in the late sixties and in the seventies in countries
such as Vietnam, Cambodia and Chile  before this court or any other
court. Kissinger's position, of course, is different: He thinks he acted
for the good of the US to defend the security and the values of his country.
This was understood as permission to act in foreign countries as deemed
necessary.

Spiegel: The assassination of your father was planned to induce the military
to stage a coup dEtat against the detested Allende?

Schneider: It is not acceptable that my father was to be removed
in the interest of the USA, as Kissinger said more or less literally according
to a tape. My father, like many other soldiers from Latin America, attended
training courses in the US and was not anti-American. He merely defended
the Constitution of his country.

Spiegel: What do you want to achieve with your lawsuit, 32 years after the
murder?

Schneider: First, I want to make clear that it is a civil suit and not criminal
proceedings. Our aim is to open a trial. It would also be of great importance
for a judge to rule that Kissinger bears individual responsibility for his
acts. This important step was taken by the courts with respect to Pinochet,
who could not hide behind his official position. The court proceedings were
only abandoned due to health reasons.

Spiegel: Why has the process against Kissinger stalled?

Schneider: Kissingers defence lawyers claim that the State -and not
the individual- was responsible for the actions. Since these were political
decisions, Congress has to decide on this, not the courts. The defence has
presented this position  now we are waiting for the judges' statement.

Judge investigating US role in 1973 coup considers forcing former secretary
of state to give evidence

Jonathan Franklin in Santiago and Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles

Guardian Wednesday June 12, 2002

Henry Kissinger may face extradition proceedings in connection with the role
of the United States in the 1973 military coup in Chile.

The former US secretary of state is wanted for questioning as a witness in
the investigation into the events surrounding the overthrow of the socialist
president, Salvador Allende, by General Augusto Pinochet.

It focuses on CIA involvement in the coup, whether US officials passed lists
of leftwing Americans in Chile to the military and whether the US embassy
failed to assist Americans deemed sympathetic to the deposed government.

Chile's Judge Juan Guzman is so frustrated by the lack of cooperation by
Mr Kissinger that he is now considering an extradition request to force him
to come to Chile and testify in connection with the death of the American
film-maker and journalist Charles Horman, who was killed by the military
days after the coup.

Horman's story was told in the 1982 Costa-Gavras film, Missing, starring
Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek.

Judge Guzman is investigating whether US officials passed the names of suspected
leftwing Americans to Chilean military authorities. Declassified documents
have now revealed that such a list existed. Sergio Corvalan, a Chilean lawyer,
said that he could not divulge the "dozens" of names on the list.

At the time of his death, Horman was investigating the murder of Rene Schneider,
the chief of staff in the Chilean army whose support for Allende and the
constitution was seen as an obstacle to the coup.

The CIA had been involved with groups plotting Schneider's murder, providing
them with weapons and advice, according to a CIA internal inquiry in 2000.
It found that the agency had withdrawn its support for the plotters before
the murder but had paid them $35,000 afterwards "to maintain the goodwill
of the group".

At the time of his murder, Schneider had five young children, who filed suit
in a Washington DC court last year against Mr Kissinger and other top officials
in the Nixon administration. They are seeking $3m (£2.15m) in damages.

Horman's wife, Joyce, suspects that he was targeted because he unwittingly
stumbled upon a gathering of US military personnel in Chile in the days before
the coup.

The American journalist Marc Cooper and the British journalist Christopher
Hitchens have been in Santiago during the past month to give evidence in
the investigation of America's role.

Cooper, who was Allende's translator at the time of the coup and now writes
for the Nation and LA Weekly, knew Horman and gave sworn testimony last month.

Cooper said: "Guzman says that if the US doesn't act soon on his request
to gather testimony from Kissinger and other US officials, he'll have no
choice but to file for their extradition to Chile."

Cooper, who wrote the book Pinochet and Me about his time in Chile, said
that the Nixon government had been more interested in supporting General
Pinochet than in investigating the deaths of its citizens at the hands of
the Chilean military.

This is not the first attempt to interview Mr Kissinger about the turbulent
period in Latin America.

During a visit to London in April, judges in Spain and France unsuccessfully
tried to question him about America's role in Operation Condor, which has
been described as a coordinated hit squad organised from Chile and including
six South American nations aimed at dealing with leftwing opposition groups.

Several declassified documents which have emerged over the past two years
have shown an increasingly visible American hand in Operation Condor.

Hitchens gave evidence on the Operation Condor case which he researched for
his book, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, published last year.

In Santiago, Hitchens said: "Today Henry Kissinger is a frightened man. He
is very afraid of the exposure that awaits him."

Mr Kissinger's lawyer William Rodgers, said that such questions should properly
be directed to the US state department and not to Mr Kissinger.

31May02 - 3:46 PM - By Dane Hamilton

NEW YORK, May 31 (Reuters) - Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
was named European adviser to Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, the latest
Washington power broker to join a major U.S. private equity firm, the firm
said.

Kissinger, considered the most influential foreign policy adviser to Presidents
Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, is joining the European strategy board of
Hicks Muse, a $10 billion fund based in Dallas, Hicks Muse announced.

It is the latest assignment for the 79-year-old statesman and 1973 Nobel
Peace Prize winner. New York-based Kissinger Associates gives geopolitical
advice to financial firms including J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., American
International Group Inc., American Express Co., Forstmann Little & Co.
and others.

Private equity or buyout firms, which take large stakes in companies with
the aim of selling them at a profit later, often hire Washington insiders
to open doors for potential business transactions. The hard negotiations
are done by the firms' financial engineers.

"Few people would not return Henry's phone call," said John Muse, founder
and partner in Hicks Muse, told Reuters. "Kissinger is very well known and
connected in the European landscape on history and economic development.
He will help us get better access and better information on people."

In recent years, large U.S. buyout firms like Kohlberg Kravis Roberts &
Co., Carlyle Group and Blackstone Group have targeted Europe as a new growth
market to offset a slump in the U.S. deal making market. Such firms have
targeted corporate divestitures as a key growth opportunity where Europe
is considered farther behind than the U.S. market.

Kissinger joins other top government officials at buyout firms, notably
Washington-based Carlyle Group, a $13 billion fund whose roster of advisers
includes former President George Bush, ex-Secretary of State James Baker
and former British Prime Minister John Major.

Hicks Muse also said Richard Fisher, former Deputy U.S. Trade Representative
under President Clinton, will join the firm's Latin American strategy board.
At the same time, Kissinger McLarty Associates, an affiliated firm founded
by Kissinger and Mack McLarty, former White House chief of staff, announced
that Fisher had joined the firm as managing partner.

Hicks Muse, said Muse, has significant assets in various Latam countries,
but is particularly concerned with Argentina, which recently faced a major
debt crisis and currency tumult that could affect media assets held jointly
with Liberty Media.

"No one in the country is better qualified to help us understand the macro
environment in Latin America better than Richard," said Muse. "For now, we
have definitely pulled in our horns and become more cautious in the region.
We have a lot of capital there we are husbanding carefully."

Muse said Kissinger would be paid a fee for being on the firm's European
board and would also likely get consulting fees for additional work. Brian
Mulroney, the former Canadian prime minister, is also adviser to Hicks Muse.

Nguyen Thi Binh, vice president of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, met
with a group of U.S. activists in New York on May 9. Many remembered her
as the incomparable Madame Binh who had headed the delegation of the National
Liberation Front of South Vietnam at the Paris peace talks in the 1970s.
She had faced down former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who threatened
the Vietnamese with nuclear bombs several times during the negotiations.
Her skill and grace under pressure gave inspiration to women everywhere to
take their place in the leadership of progressive causes.

Madame Binh thanked the movement here for its work to stop the war. She also
explained that Vietnam today, although reunited and at peace, continues to
suffer serious health problems from the heavy use of toxic chemicals--like
Agent Orange--that the U.S. dropped all over the countryside. Its economy
is still one of the poorest in Asia, and has never received the reparations
promised for the terrible damage done by the U.S. war.

This article appeared in the Daily Telegraph, owned by Conrad Black, fellow
Bilderberger with Kissinger. If D'Ancona is to be believed this is
the ONLY media interview given by Kissinger on his visit to Europe. Ensuring
he is portrayed in a good light.
Note the expression "there is absolutely no respectable evidence of his own
or the US Government's involvement in these cases." In fact there is plenty
of evidence - and the evidence is mounting Mr Kissinger - you cannot expect
sycophantic journalists to lie for you for ever.[TG]

Matthew d'Ancona

Daily Telegraph - 28Apr02

HENRY KISSINGER'S visit to London last week was overshadowed by the campaign
of European judges to settle 30-year-old scores. In his only interview of
the trip, he tells Matthew d'Ancona why he is undeterred.

'If you're here to see Kissinger, you are scum," chants the mob outside the
Royal Albert Hall. Well, I guess that's me, then. [among others such as
'Kissinger, Terrorist; Police Protect the Criminals; and Hey, Hey, Henry
K, How Many Kids Did you Kill Today? TG]

On the road, dozens of demonstrators are blocking the traffic in a sit-down
protest. Their comrades brandish placards with slogans such as "Henry: Portrait
of a Serial Killer", which seem to hold the good doctor responsible for just
about every misfortune to befall humanity since the Flood.

Inside the hall, 2,800 businessmen are awaiting
Henry Kissinger's speech to the Institute of Directors' annual convention.
But first I am whisked off to meet him in a tiny, brightly-lit changing room
which is being used as an improvised audience chamber for the morning.

As I enter, Lord Young of Graffham, Margaret Thatcher's Trade and Industry
Secretary, is leaving. Deep in the bowels of the Albert Hall, the baying
crowd can no longer be heard. But Dr Kissinger's numerous Special Branch
officers are taking no chances: officially, I am told, he is not here yet.

In fact, he is most definitely here. Reclining on a sofa, immaculate in dark
suit and maroon polka dot tie, the former American Secretary of State takes
the melee around him in his stride, issuing instructions to his entourage
in the unmistakable, slow baritone.

His visit has been overshadowed by requests from French and Spanish judicial
investigators to question him in connection with "Operation Condor", an alleged
campaign of terror in Latin America during the 1970s when he was in office.
Has it spoiled his trip to Britain to be hounded in this way?

"Look," he says, examining the back of his hand, "this is, as it happens,
the first country I came to after I left Germany in 1938.

"It was only for a few weeks, but, nevertheless, it was my first experience
of freedom. It's a country in which I served in the 84th infantry division
in 1944. It is a country with which I have a long association and I have
many friends here."

True: but that hasn't stopped Baltasar Garzon - the magistrate who attempted
to extradite General Pinochet in 1998 - and others from trying to intercept
the 78-year-old Dr Kissinger on his trip to London.

The campaign, he says, is an abuse of the principles it claims to uphold:
"What they are attempting to do is to use universal human rights to settle
scores from 30 years ago. They're not making any charges involving universal
violations. They're getting into specific issues of the management of American
foreign policy with respect to one very geographically confined situation."

He is annoyed by "major misrepresentation" in the press of the last attempt
to apprehend him, in Paris last year. On that occasion, Judge Roger Le Loire
issued a summons to Dr Kissinger to appear as a witness in the Pinochet case.

The matter was handed over to the US Government and he did not, as was widely
reported, "flee" the French capital: "I maintained my regular schedule and
I left on the flight two days later exactly as planned."

The real question is whether Dr Kissinger, chased around Europe by campaigning
lawyers, expects ultimately to face cross-examination. "The issue last time
was alleged complicity in the disappearance of a Frenchman in Argentina
[Jean-Yves Claudet-Fernandez, a member of the Chilean Left, who disappeared
in Buenos Aires in 1975].

"I'd never heard of the Frenchman - as you would expect. I'd never heard
of the case. But my position is that if the US Government thinks it is
appropriate for me to answer the questions of foreign judges about the conduct
of American policy I will cooperate to the fullest extent."

This seems an unlikely outcome, given that there is absolutely no respectable
evidence of his own or the US Government's involvement in these cases. Even
so he believes that the new vogue for pursuing unsettled scores from the
Cold War using human rights legislation may be storing up serious trouble
for the future.

"People should ask whether it is actually feasible to conduct international
policy if high officials, 30 years after the event, are hounded on tactical
matters, on individual matters about which common sense tells you they couldn't
possibly have any knowledge. The pursuit of high officials of foreign governments
- especially friendly governments - should be reserved for truly major human
rights violations."

Nonetheless, it is clear that being hounded by continental lawyers has not
diminished his sense of humour (later, he says the reason that he speaks
so slowly is that he is translating himself into English). He chuckles when
I quote a passage from his most recent book Does America Need A Foreign Policy?
(2001) on future diplomacy in the Middle East in which he predicted that
"the American contribution will depend on its ability to insist on a strategic
and political concept for the enterprise".

He knows what I am going to ask: do President Bush and his recent envoy in
the Middle East, Colin Powell, have such a "concept"? The man whose shuttle
diplomacy secured the Arab-Israeli ceasefire in 1973 smiles wryly, and chooses
his words with care.

"I do not think they have yet settled on what the precise concept is, but
I hope they will before Colin Powell launches himself into the region again.
On this particular trip, his mission was to calm the situation. And that
he did."

He admits that he was "concerned at the beginning" that America might be
seen to be weakening its position on Palestinian terrorism, but applauds
Powell for "eliminating the incipient fatalism" on both sides of the conflict.

On the day we meet, the papers are full of stories about the Bethlehem siege
and the aftermath of the Jenin confrontation, with calls for international
diplomatic intervention becoming ever more clamorous.

Dr Kissinger's warning is that the objectives of any subsequent interference
must be utterly realistic: "When one enters a negotiation, one ought to be
able to describe the outcome towards which one is aiming," he says.

"I believe that simple coexistence between the Israelis and Arabs would be
a tremendous achievement. It should not simply be a ratification of the status
quo. It should give the Palestinians satisfaction of some of their demands".
But questions such as the fate of Palestinian refugees and the final borders
of a Palestinian state must, he says, be deferred for now.

As for Yasser Arafat, Dr Kissinger believes that only pressure from Arab
states can dislodge him. "It's not possible for Israel to say who should
be the Palestinian negotiator.

We should say to the Arab states: given your interests, and given your
constructive approach, you have to settle who should perform that role. And
if you decide on Arafat, you have to take into account what will happen if
he is untrustworthy."

Dr Kissinger is full of praise for the Prime Minister's conduct since September
11, although he says that if he lived in Britain he would probably vote
Conservative.

In answer to one of my questions, he admits that Tony Blair's evangelical
foreign policy - which he calls "Gladstonian" - contrasts sharply with his
own "Disraelian" preference for realpolitik and geopolitical realism. "I
question the idea of universal crusades," he says, "because I think, looking
at it as an American, they will eventually go beyond our capacity."

Realistic to the last: unlike the mob outside, and, one suspects, the judges
who think they can outfox this formidable survivor.

Fri Apr 26,10:05 AM ET - Associated Press

HANOI, Vietnam - Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger should "bear
responsibility" for the human suffering caused by the Vietnam War, Vietnam's
government said Friday.

During a speech by Kissinger in London on Wednesday, dozens of protesters
outside the meeting hall accused him of war crimes for his role in U.S. actions
in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia during the war.

Kissinger ignored the protesters, but acknowledged in his speech that mistakes
had "quite possibly" been made by administrations in which he served.

Asked to comment on the accusations, Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman
Phan Thuy Thanh noted that Kissinger had served as U.S. President Richard
Nixon's national security adviser and secretary of state during the war.

"We hold that as a key official with an important role in the U.S. administration
during the time the United States waged a war of aggression against Vietnam,
Mr. Kissinger should bear responsibility for the losses and suffering caused
by the war to the Vietnamese people," she said in a brief statement. She
did not elaborate.

The war, which spilled over into neighboring Cambodia and Laos, ended with
a communist victory in 1975 over the U.S.-backed government of South Vietnam.
An estimated 3 million Vietnamese and more than 58,000 Americans perished
in the conflict.

Thousands of other Vietnamese continue to be affected by poisonous defoliants
used by U.S. forces during the war, and by accidental explosions of buried
bombs and shells left over from the fighting.

From a speech by the former US National Security Adviser to the Institute
of Directors at the Albert Hall, London

There are problems in the European-American relationship. A new generation
is coming into power in Europe and the Soviet threat is gone. On the US side
there has been a shift in the geographic locus of power. My generation had
experience of Europe, we took vacations there, we knew Europeans. The new
generation of US leaders is from the south. It's an explanation of a US policy
often termed "unilateral".

At the end of World War Two the generation of leaders had experience in
international affairs even though their countries had been greatly weakened
by the war. Leaders are now more preoccupied with their own politics at home.
For all of these reasons, dialogue has been more difficult. Europe has been
absorbed by its own integration. American has, by definition, been sidelined
by the events. This is the context in which events are evolving.

For America the most immediate problem has been the terrorist attacks. In
Europe every country has suffered direct attacks from abroad. America never
had and never imagined it would.

In American history every problem has proved to be solvable. There is a natural
proclivity to eliminate the source of danger. This sometimes clashes with
the European attitude in which problems sometimes have to be managed rather
than solved and in which there are no final solutions.

The great achievement of Britain in the 19th century was that it was able
to translate its power into consensus. The challenge for America is to do
the same.

Giles Tremlett in Madrid

The Spanish judge who was responsible for the arrest of General Augusto Pinochet
in Britain in October 1998 is attempting to have Henry Kissinger interviewed
by British police when he arrives in London next week.

Judge Baltasar Garzon has told the British authorities via Interpol that
he wants the former US secretary of state questioned as a witness in his
investigations into the torture, genocide and acts of terrorism allegedly
committed by the Chilean dictator and other military strongmen in Latin America.

If the request was accepted, Mr Kissinger - Richard Nixon's assistant for
national security from 1969-1973 and secretary of state between 1973-1977
- would have his first ever personal encounter with international human rights
law at the hands of Metropolitan police officers, who would present him with
a list of questions from Judge Garzon.

Mr Kissinger has managed to avoid similar requests from courts in France
and Chile in the past year.

William D Rogers, a member of Kissinger Associates in Washington, said yesterday
he believed Mr Kissinger still planned to travel to London and was prepared
to "provide whatever evidence his memory can generate". But, he added, Judge
Garzon ought to direct his questions to the US state department.

The document sent by Judge Garzon to Interpol on Monday said he needed to
know if Mr Kissinger would be in London "in order to request that he declare
before the competent authorities in relation to the case in which Augusto
Pinochet has been indicted by this court".

Any questions are likely to concentrate on Operation Condor, a secret agreement
under which half a dozen Latin American military regimes allegedly agreed
to eradicate leftwing opponents. Spanish prosecutors claimed that documents
released recently by the CIA showed that the US knew about Operation Condor
and trained many of the military officers from the death squads.

Mr Kissinger is not a suspect in the case and would simply be required to
answer questions as a witness.

The request to question Mr Kissinger was sparked by lawyers representing
victims of Gen Pinochet's regime who spotted an article in The Guardian last
month which said that Mr Kissinger was due to be a speaker at the Royal Albert
Hall on April 24, as part of a convention organised by the Institute of
Directors.

A Met spokeswoman said she was unable to say whether Judge Garzon's request
had been received or acted on.

However, an Institute of Directors spokesman said they were still expecting
Mr Kissinger to speak at the conference next week.

Prosecuting lawyers were confident yesterday that, due to treaties signed
by Britain and Spain on judicial cooperation and terrorism, Mr Kissinger
would not be able to avoid questioning in Britain.

"Mr Kissinger has two options: either he can travel and expose himself to
questioning or he can not travel," Carlos Slepoy, a Madrid-based prosecution
lawyer, said.

"If he does not go, it would be a demonstration that he wants to avoid a
justice system which, at the moment, is only asking him what he knows."

On April 17, it became known that Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon intended
to interrogate ex-US State Secretary Henry Kissinger about the case of Operation
Condor. The judge is known with its insistence. That was because of this
inquiry several years ago, that the former Chilean dictator was detained
in Great Britain. Thanks to Garzon, Russian media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky
spent several months in prison. And now Garzon encroached upon Henry Kissinger.

And what's the matter? What is it, the Operation Condor?

It was planned in 1975, in Santiago, at the meeting of police leaders of
South America, for fighting against enemies of dictators - Augusto Pinochet
(Chile), Hugo Banzer (Bolivia), Alfredo Stroessner (Paraguay), Figeredo
(Brasilia) - and governments Isabel Peron (Argentina) and Juan Maria Bardaberri
(Uruguay). A system was created for exchange of information, physical
annihilation of suspect elements and for coordination of "death squadrons"
activities in Argentina, Bolivia, Brasilia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Ecuador, and
Chile. "Death squadrons" acted in spite of national borders. This could be
seen from archives found in Paraguay in 1992. So, in 1975 in Rome, Chilean
Vice President Bernardo Leighton (who was Vice President in Christian democrat
Eduardo Frei's government and convinced opponent of Salvador Aliende, as
well as of Pinochet) and his wife were wounded.

In 1976, in Washington, foreign minister of Aliende's government, Orlando
Letelier (to the point, Henry Kissinger's friend) was killed in a car explosion.
Among the greatest victims of Operation Condor, there was general Carlos
Prats, Uruguayan politicians Selmar Michelini and Hector Gutierrez Ruiz.
Main supporters of such actions were Chileans, while their main executor
was DINA - secret political police with colonel Manuel Contreraz, whose direct
curator was Augusto Pinochet.

So, and why Henry Kissinger? It is not a secret that Americans did their
best to avert Salvador Aliende' coming to power. This could be seen from
minutes of Committee 40 sittings, headed by Henry Kissinger. The committee
worked out and coordianted activities aimed initially at averting Aliende's
coming to power, and afterwards - at weakening and destabilizing his government.
It was not without Kissinger's assistance, that FBI helped Pinochet to identify
and to detain in Paraguay Chilean oppositionist George Isaak Fuentez Alarchon.

Interrogations and tortures of Alarchon were leaded by Contreras, paid by
CIA. These data could be found in CIA memorandum from August 1978 and which
was declassified several years ago, as well as other documents of the Department
of State and of FBI.

Apropos, Baltasar Garzon was not the first who tries to interrogate Henry
Kissinger. May 28, 2001, a similar attempt was made by French judge Roge
Le Loir. Though, former Secretary of State, who was in Paris at that time,
did not come according to subpoena and hastily left French capital. At that
he was supported by US embassy in Paris and by State Department of the US
which discreetly informed French side that for receiving information diplomatic
channels should be used. While Le Loir addressed to Washington in 1999 through
diplomatic channels, but he received no answer.

One more judge, Argentine Rodolfo Canocoba Chorral investigating cases of
human rights' violation, kidnapping and murders of dissidents by Latin-American
special services in 2001 took a decision about imprisonment pending trial
of Jorge Rafael Videla (1976-1981 Argentine dictator) and about arrest if
his property in sum of 1 million dollars because of accusing him of implication
in a criminal organization carrying out Condor Operation. In the framework
of the case, kidnapping of at least 80 people is being investigated. The
judge addressed to the Interpol to arrest ex-Paraguayan dictator Alfredo
Stroessner, Manuel Contreras and three officers and a policemen from Uruguay,
who committed over 20 kidnappings in Buenos Aires. The judge confirmed that
he could call ex-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and ex-Chilean dictator
Augusto Pinochet. Rodolfo Chorral hoped in particular that through putting
Henry Kissinger to the investigation, it will manage to get new information
about Operation Condor.

While Chilean judge Juan Gusman Tapia who carried on the case of Pinochet
addressed to US authorities asking for permission about receiving information
from Kissinger about the fate of US journalist Charles Horman, killed by
Pinochet's agents in 1973. Apropos, Horman became pre-image of main character
of well-known Costa-Gavras film "Missing" which was awarded in 1982 with
US Academy of Cinema's prize. According to one of the authors of a book about
Videl, Kissinger once said to Argentine foreign minister of dictatorship
time: "If you want to kill, do it fast." Therefore, now US administration
defends a person, who is wanted to testify in two continents.

Baltasar Garzon hardly will be more lucky than his colleagues from other
countries. However, the Spanish judge is known with his insistence and his
principles. So, the "great Henry" should better not appear in Spain in the
nearest future, not to get to prison.

One more time it should be noticed that US authorities fully mastered the
principle of double standards. For the sake of justice (as it is understood
in Washington) the White House is ready to send soldiers even to Antarctica.
While at the same time, it did not want to help to other countries' justice.
For, Kissinger is being called only to testify. Could it be, that official
Washington is afraid of Kissinger's evidence to damage US prestige as the
main bastion of democracy? Probably, it is really so. Therefore, ex-Secretary
of State hardly will appear before Spanish trial.

Come to the Protest - People Not Profit, Peace Not War!
8.30am, Wednesday 24 April
Royal Albert Hall
South Kensington tube
The talk is being organised by the terminally misguided
Institute of Directors who are contactable
at (0207) 766 8919

Henry Kissinger was Richard Nixons Secretary of State, his second in
command.

He was a driving force behind the US war on Vietnam which killed 1 million
Vietnamese people.

Kissinger was directly responsible for ordering the carpet-bombing of Cambodia
in 1969.

He gave full backing and military assistance to the Pinochet coup in Chile,
later sanctioning the murder of Orlando Letelier in Washington in 1976.

Kissinger backed the Pakistani government in opposing Bangladeshi indpendence.
Once again he supplied arms and intelligence.

He gave the go-ahead for the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975. Over
200,000 people were killed as a result.

He was also responsible for souring relations between Turkey, Greece and
Cyprus, a division which still produces murder and maiming.

Kissingers legacy of American brutality around the world survives.
He remains a hero to the warmongers in Washington and Downing Street.

Kissinger is arriving in London to talk to the top 2,000 businessmen in Britain.
He has his snout in the corporate trough too. Kissinger Associates
clients have included Union Carbide, Coca-Cola, American Express, ITT Lockheed,
Arco and HSBC.

The Annual Convention is the Institute's flagship event attracting over 2500
directors annually and is an essential date in your diary - informative,
interactive, and inspiring and not to be missed.

The IoD Annual Convention is Europe's largest gathering of business leaders
and the most prestigious event in the UK corporate calendar.

Attended every year by some 2,500 senior business decision-makers and their
guests, the Convention is addressed by business and political leaders of
unrivalled stature. It is your opportunity to learn from these inspirational
individuals and understand how the most crucial issues in today's world will
effect your business.

Globalisation - the real nature and impact

There is no doubt globalisation has a major impact on UK business - small
or large. How will you make sure you avoid the potential hazards of a global
economy and best capitalise on the immense opportunities available?

Put the date in your diary, reserve your seat - and join Britain's business
elite to hear an outstanding line-up of speakers address this year's most
pressing theme - globalisation.

Key Benefits

explore business opinion on the most crucial, and controversial issue of
the moment

gain valuable insight from some of today's key global players

enjoy the rare opportunity to learn from, and by inspired by Dr Henry Kissinger
- one of the world's most respected individuals

understand the relationship between globalisation and corporate social
responsibility

network with over 2000 fellow business leaders

hear Dr Stephen Covey - one of Time magazine's top 25 most influential Americans
and author of world-famous The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

understand, whether we like it or not, the business world in which every
company, small or large, now operates.

These groups allege that Kissinger supported "Operation Condor" - a collaborative
effort by the military regimes of Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Paraguay to
track down their political enemies in the 1970s - during his time in office.

Kissinger had intended to visit Sao Paulo March 12-13 to participate in the
65th anniversary of the Israelite Congregation of Sao Paulo, one of the largest
Jewish organizations in Brazil. He was also to be awarded the Cruzeiro do
Sul (Southern Cross) Order of Merit by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

Jewish community leaders, however, told the press that fear of protests from
human rights groups was the real motive for Kissinger's cancellation.

"It is unofficially known that Kissinger, after being informed of objections
by certain groups (to the award), decided to avoid a politically embarrassing
situation," Rabbi Henry Sobel of the Sao Paulo Israelite Congregation said.

Several human rights groups have collected signatures in the last few weeks
petitioning Cardoso not to bestow Brazil's highest honor on Kissinger.

"We strongly urge (the government) not to bestow this honor, in the name
of democracy, human rights, and human dignity," said a message from one group
posted on the Internet.

The Irish Examiner - Thursday 28 Feb 2002

by Sean O'Riordan and Brian O'Mahony

ANGRY students protested at former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's
visit to University College Cork yesterday.

Dr Kissinger was shielded by gardaí and college security staff as
he made his way into the university's Boole library.

More than 400 students took part in the protest, chanting "The Hague not
the Boole" and "No grand prize for genocide", claiming Dr Kissinger should
be indicted for war crimes. They then held a minute's silence for what they
called the victims of Dr Kissinger's foreign policy.

Two women from the Cork Atlantis Foundation approached gardaí manning
the barriers and demanded they arrest Mr Kissinger.

English and sociology student Tracey Ryan, from Tipperary, said: "I'm outraged
that he was invited here, especially as there was no consultation with the
students."

Dave Edmond, 55, said: "I came to join the students. If we didn't protest
we'd be genuflecting to American power."

Once inside Dr Kissinger said: "I have not responded to accusations like
this in the past."

He dismissed the claims against him as "distortions and misrepresentations
of the facts". He added: "Things have been taken out of context. They are
fundamentally beneath contempt."

During the questions and answers session after the conference Dr Kissinger
rejected out of hand suggestions that the US "illegally bombed Cambodia"
during the Vietnam war.

He said that when President Richard Nixon took office 500 Americans were
dying every week in Vietnam.

After "repeated warnings" to the North Vietnamese to quit the Cambodia region
bordering Vietnam, the US had bombed the area.

The zone that was attacked had been cleared of Cambodians and the country
did not object to the campaign. That was a matter of record, Dr Kissinger
said.

Groups including the Cork Peace Alliance, Earthwatch and the Socialist Party
joined in yesterday's protest.

Dozens of students sat in front of Dr Kissinger's car. Gardaí warned
them they could be arrested for obstruction but the students refused to budge.

They braced themselves for trouble but the gardaí suddenly dispersed,
leaving the protesters perplexed.

Visiting
Kissinger enraged by link to Milosevic

Olivia Kelleher - Irish Independent - Thursday 28th February 2002

FORMER US Secretary of State, Dr Henry Kissinger, denied being a war criminal
yesterday, claiming it was an insult to human intelligence for protestors
in Cork to compare him with Slobodan Milosevic.

Protestors at University College Cork chanted and waved banners bearing the
slogan 'The Milosevic of Manhattan' prior to the arrival of the 56th US Secretary
of State, who was in office during the controversial Nixon administration.

"These people are throwing around allegedly criminal charges without a shred
of real evidence. I don't know who they represent but I wish their knowledge
equalled their passion."

The elderly statesman, who was visiting the university to deliver a speech
at an MBA Association of Ireland business conference, said he has never replied
to derogatory remarks in the media.

"I consider them (the accusations) fundamentally beneath contempt. They are
based on distortions and misrepresentations."

The focus of Kissinger's' address was on US foreign policy particularly in
aftermath of September 11.

Dr Kissinger said the international scene is experiencing an extraordinary
period of change for which there is no historical precedent. One of the biggest
challenges facing the US administration, he said, was to bring countries
together to prevent the spread of biological and chemical weapons.

Dr Kissinger's visit was condemned by human rights organisations who claim
he flouted international law in his dealings with Bangladesh, Chile and East
Timor.

The Irish Times
Letters Page
Saturday 2nd March 2002

HENRY KISSINGER IN CORK

Sir, - Please allow me to summarise future European foreign policy, as advocated
by Dr. Henry Kissinger, speaking in University College Cork:

1. Russia is a threat (or will be, once again, in a few years time).

2. Japan is a threat.

3. China is a threat.

4. The United States is not a threat to anyone.

5. Europe should ally itself with the United States in opposing the threat
of 1 to 3 above (and all others).

Our future is secure. - Yours, etc.,

CATHERINE FORDE,
MacCurtains Villas,
College Road,
Cork.

Sir, - I would like to commend the students and workers who gave Henry Kissinger
an appropriate welcome TO UCC last Wednesday. Their principled stand throws
into relief the moral bankruptcy of the assorted worthies who fêted
this grotesque fraud.

Kissinger's crimes against humanity are a matter of public record. For those
seeking the "real evidence" demanded by Kissinger in Cork, I would recommend
Christopher Hitchens's damning book The Trial of Henry Kissinger (Verso,
2001). - Is mise,

Kissinger Wiretaps to be Released

By Claire Soares - 12Feb02

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former President George Bush was dismissed as "too
weak" for a secret breakthrough mission to China in the 1970s by then-President
Richard Nixon and his foreign policy adviser Henry Kissinger, according to
a White House telephone transcript obtained by Reuters on Monday.

When Nixon proposed Bush as a cloaked emissary for a trip that would eventually
pave the way for the reopening of U.S.-Chinese relations, Kissinger responded,
"Absolutely not, he is too soft and not sophisticated enough."

The gravelly voiced national security adviser, who ended up undertaking the
diplomatic journey himself, added: "Bush would be too weak."

"I thought so, too, but I was trying to think of somebody with a title,"
Nixon replied. At the time of the call -- April 27, 1971 -- Bush was U.S.
ambassador to the United Nations.

The transcript is one of more than 20,000 pages documenting Kissinger's telephone
diplomacy, which are to be made available to the public after being kept
under lock and key for three decades.

On Monday the National Archives took delivery of copies of Kissinger's telephone
transcripts made between 1969 and 1974.

A National Archives spokeswoman said the documents would be kept at College
Park, Maryland. Researchers will sift through and then officially release
them to the public, in a process that could take up to a year.

"These are the Kissinger wire-taps," said Thomas Blanton, director of the
National Security Archive at George Washington University, who lobbied for
public access to the papers.

"U.S. foreign policy has never been so centralized in two people as it was
in the Kissinger-Nixon era. And these transcripts put you in the room when
Kissinger's talking to his boss and every world leader," Blanton added.

ACCESS FIERCELY GUARDED

Until recently, Kissinger, 78, fiercely guarded access to his transcripts,
saying they were personal and 90 percent of the information was in documents
already in the public domain.

His papers were kept in the Library of Congress, with Kissinger designated
as the gatekeeper. Five years after his death the papers were due to pass
into public hands.

Monday's bequest was his second in a year. After pressure from Blanton's
organization, Kissinger last August gave the State Department 10,000 pages
of documents. He was secretary of State between 1973 and 1977, under first
Nixon and then Gerald Ford.

"Once the State Department took the official position that these were government
records then Kissinger could hardly say no when, at our request, the National
Archives came calling for the White House transcripts," Blanton said.

German-born Kissinger shaped policies behind major world events of the 1970s,
including the growing contact between Israel and the Arab world and U.S.-Soviet
arms control talks.

Secrecy was a Kissinger hallmark. After rejecting Bush for the Chinese mission,
he went on to negotiate himself on behalf of Nixon to open the Communist
country to the West without even telling the then-U.N. ambassador.

Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for his role in talks to end
the Vietnam War.

But in the 1971 declassified transcript he boasted: "Mr. President, I have
not said this before but I think if we get this thing working, we will end
Vietnam this year."

Kissinger, who set up a consulting firm, continues to be an independent
diplomatic mover-and-shaker, recently urging nuclear-armed rivals India and
Pakistan to sort out their differences at the negotiating table.

Is this how bin Laden escaped?

Bruce Anderson says that American fear of casualties almost certainly stopped
the SAS from killing Osama bin Laden

Early last month, a distinguished American went to see a British regiment.
After more than 30 years at the centre of events, Henry Kissinger has an
excuse for being blasé about such excursions. Yet there was none of
that on this occasion. The helicopter was fog-bound and it is a long journey
to Hereford by road, but Dr Kissingers hosts at the SASs Stirling
Lines HQ were delighted by his obvious enthusiasm. In turn, he was
tremendously impressed by their high motivation and
professionalism.

The visit was not confined to pleasantries at senior level. The Doctor had
a lively meeting with 70 SAS men of all ranks. The regiment is much the least
hierarchical outfit in the British army; the respect due to rank has to be
earned, and constantly re-earned. As the men are used to speaking their minds
to their own officers, they naturally extend the same courtesy to everyone
else. Nor are they big on Sirs. Dr Kissinger was addressed as
Boss or Boss Kissinger, which amused him. Indeed,
his unstuffiness and evident enthusiasm for vigorous debate impressed a group
of men who pride themselves on being hard to impress. Good bloke,
that, said a sergeant afterwards: probably the most complimentary remark
he had ever made about someone of his own sex.

Boss Kissinger rapidly realised that he would have to defend his country.
He was talking to men with a grievance, who believed that American generals
had let bin Laden escape. Some of Dr Kissingers audience had just come
back from Afghanistan. They had taken part in the attack on the cave complex
at Tora Bora, where two squadrons of the SAS went into action: a significant
proportion of its total strength. Fully manned, a squadron has 64 men; not
since the second world war have so many SAS men fought in the same engagement.

It is to be hoped that someone will eventually write an account of the battle
of Tora Bora, for it was a feat of arms; an epic of skill and courage, even
by the standards of the SAS.

And not only British skill and courage. The SAS was fighting alongside Delta
Force, the US armys special forces, and though the Brits did not think
that the Yanks were quite their equal, our men were impressed by their men.
Delta Force is not the same as the SAS. Much larger, its nearest British
equivalent would be the SAS, merged with 3 (commando) brigade and 16 (air
assault) brigade. As a result of Afghanistan, there are now pressures in
the Pentagon to create an inner-core special force on British lines. Donald
Rumsfelds enthusiasm for the SAS goes beyond tributes at press conferences;
he wants one of his own.

But the SAS was happy enough with Delta Force. It was the American high command
which let their own men down, and everyone else. The SAS and Delta Force
won a victory for the West. The American generals then ensured that the full
fruits of victory could not be harvested.

By the end of the battle, the SAS was certain that it knew where bin Laden
was: in a mountain valley, where he could have been trapped. The men of the
SAS would have been happy to move in for the kill, dividing themselves into
beaters and guns. Going round the side, the guns would have positioned themselves
at the head of the valley to cut off bin Ladens retreat. The beaters
would then have swept up the glen. If such a drive had taken place, the SAS
is convinced that bin Laden would not have escaped. It would have been happy
to fight alongside Delta Force and would have been glad of the assistance
of American ground-attack aircraft. But it would also have been confident
that it could finish the job on its own.

It did not get the chance. The SAS was under overall US command, and the
American generals faltered. Understandably enough, they wanted Delta Force
to be in at the death; they would have preferred it if bin Laden had fallen
to an American bullet. So would Delta Force; every bit as much as the SAS,
its men were raring to go. It was their commanders who held them back.

Being in at such a death involves the risk of death. It seems unlikely that
bin Laden could have been bagged without casualties. The men on the ground
did not quail at that prospect; the generals on the radio did. They wanted
Delta Force to kill bin Laden; they were not prepared to allow their men
to be killed in the process. They would not even allow USAF ground-attack
aircraft to operate below 12,000 feet. As far as the SAS could tell, their
hope was that the ragged-trousered militants of the Northern Alliance would
do most of the dangerous stuff  and take most of the casualties 
while Delta Force came in for the coup de grâce. Nor were the American
generals willing to allow the SAS to win the glory which they were denying
to American troops.

So strategy was sabotaged by schizoid irresolution. There followed hours
of fiffing and faffing, while gold coins were helicoptered in, to encourage
the Northern Alliance. The USA is the greatest military power in the history
of the planet, spending well over $300 billion a year on defence, yet everything
was paralysed because it would not allow its fighting men to fight. While
the generals agonised about bodybags, bin Laden was escaping.

Henry Kissinger tried to put all this in context. He told the SAS that in
his first five weeks as National Security Adviser, the US lost at least 400
lives every week in Vietnam, and that was only a small percentage of the
total casualties. The scars of those losses in a lost war take a long time
to heal.

Naturally, Henry Kissinger was only prepared to explain the American
generals mindset, not to criticise it. There are reports that Secretary
Rumsfeld is less restrained, and that he has made his dissatisfaction clear.
But if Dr Kissinger is right, Mr Rumsfeld will have to do more than that.
The SAS formed the firm impression that in Dr Kissingers view, Iraq
will be the next big target; that it is no longer a question of whether,
but when.

If so, it is time for the Americans to discard fantasies about toppling Saddam
by airpower plus local surrogates: Northern Kurds, Southern Shia, et al.
If the US wants to get Saddam, it will have to go in and get him, with a
full-scale invasion. But are the generals who hung back at Tora Bora the
right men to invade Iraq?

When Charles Guthrie was Chief of our General Staff, he had a simple principle
when choosing generals. His reading of military history had taught him that
the generals who rise to the top during long periods of peace are rarely
fitted to fight a war. So he was determined to promote men whose temperament
was not that of a peacetime soldier, and to ensure that all the key commands
in the British army were held by warriors.

It is now time for Donald Rumsfeld to retire a number of his Vietnamised,
risk-averse generals, and to replace them with warriors. After all, he will
shortly have a war to fight.

Posted: 3/11/01 18:30:47 Australian Broadcasting Corporation

A Nobel Peace Prize winner has joined court action seeking to try former
US secretary of state Henry Kissinger for torture, disappearances and murders
in South America during his time in office.

Guatamalan indigenous leader Rigaberta Menchu has joined individuals and
human rights groups in the suit against Dr Kissinger and former Chilean dictator
Augusto Pinochet.

Courts in Chile are being asked to rule that the two men were responsible
for Operation Condor, a secret agreement between various South American
governments to eliminate opposition in the 1970s.

Ms Menchu, who won the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, has joined the prosecution
after meeting with the head of Chile's appeals court.

She says declassified CIA documents will prove that Dr Kissinger and General
Pinochet co-authored Operation Condor as part of a wider plan to prevent
any leftist governments being elected in South America.

Mr Kissinger has denied his involvement

Tuesday, 11 September, 2001, 02:53 GMT 03:53 UK

A lawsuit has been filed against the former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
over his alleged role in the death of the former Chilean army commander,
General Rene Schneider, in 1970. The suit was filed in Washington by members
of the general's family. They accuse Mr Kissinger of being involved in what
they say was a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) plot to kill him.General
Schneider died after resisting a kidnapping attempt which, the family says,
was part of a wider plot to prevent the Chilean Marxist leader, Salvador
Allende, from becoming president.Mr Kissinger has repeatedly denied any
involvement in General Schneider's death. The court action follows several
requests by judges in Chile and Argentina judges to question Mr Kissinger
over human rights abuses committed during the military regimes of the 1970s.The
BBC correspondent in Washington says the lawsuit stems from an investigation
by a US television network, which claims that CIA communications contradict
Mr Kissinger's version of events. Conspiracy

General Schneider's family say the botched kidnapping attempt took place
as part of a covert White House campaign to prevent Socialist Salvador Allende
from becoming president.

General Pinochet ousted President Allende

Both Mr Kissinger and his boss, the then-president Richard Nixon, were heavily
involved in backing anti-Allende factions in Chile, the indictment alleges.
The general was a key player in Chile at the time as he had provided crucial
backing to Mr Allende after his narrow presidential election victory on 4
September 1970. In an apparent attempt to remove Mr Allende's military support,
coup plotters attempted to kidnap General Schneider, but shot him when he
reached for his gun in self-defence. He died two days after the attempt on
24 October 1970 in Santiago's Military Hospital. 'No connection'

Mr Kissinger, President Nixon's national security adviser at the time, and
later secretary of state for both Mr Nixon and his successor, Gerald Ford,
has always denied his involvement.

Mr Kissinger served under the late former president Nixon

In 1975, a US Senate investigation established that America had indeed backed
a coup which eventually brought down Mr Allende three years later, and set
up the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.However, Mr Kissinger testified
before the Senate hearing that he cut off all support for the coup plotters
the week before General Schneider was murdered.A high-ranking State Department
official referred to previously declassified documents about the situation
in Chile during the 1960s and '70s, saying "the documents speak for themselves".

Military Leader Was Killed in Kidnap Attempt Linked to Nixon Administration

By Bill Miller - Washington Post Staff Writer - Tuesday, September 11, 2001;
(same day as the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre)

The family of Chilean military commander Rene Schneider, who was killed 31
years ago during a botched kidnapping, filed a federal lawsuit in Washington
yesterday accusing Henry A. Kissinger, Richard M. Helms and other officials
in the Nixon administration of orchestrating a series of covert activities
that led to his assassination.

The lawsuit, which attorneys said is based heavily upon recently declassified
CIA documents, seeks more than $3 million in damages from Kissinger, Helms
and the U.S. government for "summary execution," assault and other civil
rights violations. It alleges that Schneider was targeted because he stood
in the way of a military coup designed to keep leftist Salvador Allende from
taking power as Chile's president. At the time, Kissinger was Nixon's national
security adviser, and Helms headed the CIA.

The suit revisits one of Chile's most notorious crimes and marks the first
time that high-level U.S. officials have been sued in connection with the
shooting. Schneider was the left-leaning head of the Chilean Armed Forces,
and his murder was long considered to have been carried out by right-wing
extremists within the military. The suit focuses on U.S. government ties
to the assailants that were described in the declassified papers.

"The United States did not want Allende to assume the presidency, and my
father was the only political obstacle for a military coup," said Schneider's
eldest son, also named Rene Schneider, who resides in Chile. He and his brother,
Raul, an artist living in Paris, are the named plaintiffs. "Obviously, he
had to be taken out of the way."

The family chose to sue after carefully reviewing the materials that became
public in the past two years, Schneider said. The documents, he said, "made
me realize that my father's death is perhaps the one crime perpetrated outside
the U.S. that most clearly links back to the U.S. government, the CIA, and
Kissinger in particular.

"I don't want revenge," he said. "I want the truth to be established."

Kissinger did not return a telephone message left at his New York office.
Helms denied wrongdoing but would not discuss details, saying that he hadn't
seen the suit and that "it's a long and complicated case."

In his 1979 autobiography, Kissinger denied involvement in Schneider's death.
He wrote that the group that tried to kidnap Schneider "proceeded on its
own in defiance of CIA instructions and without our knowledge."

The role of the United States in Schneider's death has been studied for years.
A Senate committee in 1975 found evidence that U.S. officials hoped to instigate
a coup to stop Allende and provided arms and encouragement to those plotting
the general's kidnapping. But the committee said its evidence showed the
CIA had withdrawn support of the kidnapping before it was carried out and
never envisioned that he would be killed.

Thousands of additional documents were declassified in recent years and provided
a more comprehensive account of what happened. In addition, the CIA provided
a report to Congress last year that detailed the agency's activities in Chile
in the early 1970s.

According to the Schneider family, the materials showed that the CIA continued
to encourage a coup in the days leading to the kidnapping. The CIA also provided
$35,000 to some of those jailed for Schneider's death, the suit said.

"Every single factual assertion in this complaint is based on a document
that has been furnished by the U.S. government," said Michael E. Tigar, the
family's attorney.

The chain of events began Sept. 15, 1970, when Nixon met with Kissinger and
Helms and ordered that action be taken to prevent Allende from assuming office
after an election in which he had won the most votes. According to the lawsuit,
Nixon said he was not concerned about risks and authorized $10 million to
be spent on a military coup.

But military officials in Chile made clear that Chile's commander in chief,
Schneider, would not go along with a coup, the suit said. The lawsuit said
Kissinger and the CIA supported a secret plan to kidnap Schneider so that
the military could take over before Allende's election could be approved
by Chile's Congress.

On the morning of Oct. 22, 1972, after two aborted kidnapping attempts, Schneider
was ambushed en route to work. The general's car was surrounded by about
six cars, and struck from behind by one of them. The kidnappers smashed the
back-seat windows on both sides. As Schneider was getting out his gun to
defend himself, the assailants shot him. He died three days later at a military
hospital, one day after Allende's victory was ratified.

Allende remained in power until a 1973 military coup that was indirectly
supported by the CIA; he killed himself while under siege. Gen. Augusto Pinochet
then began a 17-year reign in which thousands of people were killed or tortured.
Pinochet was arrested in London in 1998 and indicted in Chile last year.
But an appellate court recently suspended the legal proceedings because of
concerns about his mental fitness for trial.

Military courts in Chile found that Schneider's death was caused by two military
groups, one led by Roberto Viaux and the other by Camilo Valenzuela. Viaux
and Valenzuela, both generals, were convicted of charges of conspiring to
cause a coup, and Viaux also was convicted of kidnapping. The CIA aided both
groups, the lawsuit said.

In a section of his autobiography entitled "The Coup That Never Was," Kissinger
recounted the September 1970 meeting with Nixon and the plans to move forward
with a secret coup agenda. He said there was less to the plan "than met the
eye" because Nixon had a history of backing off plans as their implications
became clearer.

Kissinger wrote that he ended the plan Oct. 15 and that Viaux's group acted
on its own. He also wrote that no one, not even Viaux, ever intended to
assassinate Schneider.

Peter Kornbluh, a Chile expert at the nonprofit National Security Archive,
who lobbied for full declassification of Chile documents, said the lawsuit
could force Kissinger, Helms and others to provide more information about
what took place.

"This crime was Chile's equivalent of the Kennedy assassination at the time,"
Kornbluh said. "It was an unparalleled, unprecedented act of political
terrorism."

Kissinger has faced other recent scrutiny. In May, he declined to appear
before a French judge who wanted to question him about allegations of human
rights violations in Latin America during the 1970s. He referred the request
to the State Department.

1970 Kidnapping Of General Led To Death - Was Henry Kissinger To Blame?

September 9, 2001

60 Minutes has learned that the family of a murdered Chilean general plans
to file a lawsuit seeking damages against Henry Kissinger for his alleged
role in the death of Gen. Rene Schneider, the commander of the Chilean Army
who was killed by kidnappers in 1970. Citing recently declassified government
documents, the civil suit is expected to claim that the CIA supported a
kidnapping plot which led to the death of the Chilean general. The CIAs
support for the kidnapping was part of a larger effort by the Agency to instigate
a coup in Chile  an objective ordered by President Nixon and overseen
by Kissinger. Bob Simon reports.

Rene Schneider Jr., son of the late general, tells Simon, I always
wanted to put all this behind me, but we have a duty to humanity to speak
about this. It would be irresponsible to remain silent. Accounts of
the former U.S. ambassador to Chile and the embassys former military
attaché - both of whom appear in the report - and the documents tell
the Cold War story of the Nixon administrations desire to thwart leftist
politician Salvadore Allendes successful election to Chiles
presidency. The Nixon White House sought a military coup in Chile before
Allendes inauguration, but Schneider, a constitutional defender, stood
in the way. Schneider was shot by the would-be kidnappers when he reached
for his revolver.

Kissinger declined to speak to 60 Minutes, but when questioned about Chile
in the past, he has responded that he personally cut off support for the
coup conspirators during a meeting with the CIA on Oct. 15, 1970, a few days
before Schneiders murder. CIA officials, however, differed with Kissinger
on this point in subsequent investigations. The Senate committee that
investigated the matter could not determine who was telling the truth.

The judge who indicted Gen. Augusto Pinochet wants to question former Secretary
of State Henry Kissinger about the assassination of an American filmmaker
in Chile during the former dictator's rule, a court official said Thursday.

Judge Juan Guzman has prepared more than 50 questions to be posed to Kissinger
about the killing of Charles Horman shortly after the 1973 coup led by Pinochet,
Supreme Court clerk Carlos Meneses said. Guzman also prepared questions for
Nathaniel Davis, the U.S. ambassador to Chile at the time.

No details about the questions were immediately available, but they are believed
to center on any knowledge the U.S. officials may have had about the case.
The Supreme Court must approve the questions before they are sent to Kissinger
and Davis through the Foreign Ministry and the State Department. Approval
is considered certain.

Kissinger was former President Richard Nixon's assistant for national
security affairs from 1969 to 1973 and was secretary of state from 1973 to
1977.

Guzman, who indicted Pinochet on human rights charges, is also handling a
criminal lawsuit filed in Chile against the former ruler by Horman's widow,
Joyce. Horman was arrested Sept. 17, 1973, six days after the bloody coup
in which Pinochet toppled Marxist President Salvador Allende.

He was taken to the main Santiago soccer stadium, which was used as a detention
camp, where he was killed. According to an official report, hundreds were
tortured and executed at the site. Horman's case was the subject of
the film "Missing," starring Sissy Spacek and Jack Lemmon.

Joyce Horman's legal action against Pinochet is sponsored in Chile
by local lawyers Sergio Corvalan and Fabiola Letelier - sister of Orlando
Letelier, a Chilean socialist killed by a car bombing in Washington, D.C.,
in 1976. That crime was subsequently traced to Pinochet's security services.

Joyce Horman came to Chile last December to file suit against Pinochet. At
the time, she said she decided to act because documents declassified by the
Clinton administration had shed new light on her husband's case. "I hope
to get more truth and more justice, and I expect the United States government
will support this effort," she said.

The 85-year-old Pinochet, meanwhile, remained at the Santiago Military
Hospital recovering from dental surgery. "My father has deteriorated,
his condition has worsened," Pinochet's younger son, Marco Antonio,
said as he left the hospital after visiting his father. Pinochet's
daughter, Lucia, angrily rejected suggestions by opponents that the
hospitalization may be an attempt to escape legal problems, saying: "We do
not lie about my father's health."

Pinochet been hospitalized repeatedly in recent months - times that
coincided with rulings in his legal fight against trial on human rights charges.

Rulings are expected as early as next week on appeals he has filed over his
indictment on charges of covering up 18 kidnappings and 57 homicides in the
case known as the "Caravan of Death," a military operation that executed
political prisoners shortly after the coup.

Kissinger shuns summons

By Patrick Bishop in Paris - 31/05/2001 - Daily Telegraph

HENRY KISSINGER, the former US Secretary of State, left Paris yesterday after
declining to answer the questions of a French magistrate seeking information
about political killings in Chile.

The American embassy told Judge Roger Le Loire that he should ask the State
Department for details of American knowledge of the murder and disappearance
of political opponents - including five French nationals - under the Pinochet
regime after the 1973 coup.

Mr Kissinger was visiting Paris when police delivered a summons to the Ritz,
where he was staying, asking him to present himself at the Palais de Justice.

The embassy later sent a letter to M Le Loire saying other obligations had
prevented the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize winner from replying to the request
and that he should direct his questions to Washington through official channels.

A State Department spokesman said it would pass on to the French authorities
what information it had about the disappearance of French citizens during
the post-coup era.

Maitre William Bourdon, representing families of the missing French nationals,
said Mr Kissinger - Secretary of State from 1973-77 - had a duty to tell
what he knew. M Le Loire is pursuing a campaign to discover the fate of the
five French people who went missing in the years after Gen Pinochet came
to power.

One, Jean-Yves Claudet-Fernandez, disappeared during an operation codenamed
"Condor" in which Chile and other South American regimes co-operated to eradicate
political opponents. M Le Loire says the Americans knew about the plan.

BBC - Tuesday, 29 May, 2001, 13:36 GMT 14:36 UK

A US embassy has reportedly told a French judge probing the 1970s disappearance
of French citizens in Chile that it does not want him to question former
secretary of state Henry Kissinger.

French Judge Roger Le Loire is looking into allegations that five French
citizens who disappeared in Chile during General Augusto Pinochet's military
regime were kidnapped and tortured. French justice officials on Monday delivered
a summons to a Paris hotel where Mr Kissinger was staying on a private visit.
But the US embassy in Paris told a French court that Mr Kissinger had other
obligations and was unable to appear, judicial sources said on condition
of anonymity.

The former US secretary of state under Presidents Richard M Nixon and Gerald
Ford, was under no legal obligation to answer the summons. A spokesman for
the US embassy said officials wished the court had not gone directly to Mr
Kissinger with the request.

Secret services

"We understand that the court is examining a period when Dr Kissinger was
an official of the US Government," spokesman Richard Lankford said. "We therefore
believe the court should present its request through government channels
to the Department of State."

Lawyer William Bourdon, who represents families of French citizens who
disappeared during the 1973-1990 Pinochet regime, had requested the summons.
Mr Kissinger's testimony is wanted in connection with alleged exchanges between
US and Chilean secret services that took place after the 1973 coup that brought
General Pinochet to power.

A Chilean judge has indicted General Pinochet on homicide and kidnapping
charges, holding him responsible for the atrocities committed by the Caravan
of Death, a military group that executed 75 political prisoners shortly after
the coup in which the general ousted President Salvador Allende.

General Pinochet is currently under house arrest and awaiting trial in Chile.

Saturday June 16, 2001 - The Guardian

The United States believes that it alone pursues and indicts war criminals;
nothing in its political or journalistic culture allows for the fact that
it might be harbouring or sheltering such a senior one. Yet one man has now
grasped what so many others have not: if Augusto Pinochet is not immune then
no one is. And that man is now extremely twitchy.

It is hard to imagine that the pudgy man in the black tie who picks up $25,000
for an after-dinner speech, is the same man who ordered or sanctioned the
destruction of civilian populations, the assassination of inconvenient
politicians and the kidnapping and disappearance of soldiers, journalists
and clerics who got in his way. But it is.

In writing this book I have been amazed by the wealth of hostile and
discreditable material, such as the betrayal of the Iraqi Kurds and the support
for South African destabilisation of Angola, that I have been compelled to
omit.

Morally repulsive as these may be, I have limited myself to those Kissingerian
offences, as revealed in declassified documents, for which there is a prima
facie case for prosecution on counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity
and offences against international law.

Kissinger symbolises the pornography of power. In 1968, he was negotiating
a Vietnam peace treaty in Paris for President Johnson. He did a deal with
the Republicans to sabotage the peace negotiations to help secure Richard
Nixon's election to president. In return, the world's self-styled "greatest
peacemaker" would be promoted under the new administration. Kissinger's venality
extended the war by four years and cost the lives of millions of Vietnamese,
Cambodians and Laotians - not to mention many thousands of US servicemen.

Indictments should also include deliberate mass killings of civilian populations
in Indochina, collusion in mass murder and assassination in Bangladesh, the
personal planning of the murder of General Schneider in Chile, involvement
in a plan to murder Archbishop Makarios in Cyprus and the incitement and
enabling of genocide in East Timor.

In the name of innumerable victims, it is time for justice to take a hand.
So, Harold Evans and Tina Brown, the next time Kissinger attends one of your
elegant soirees, rather than fawning to him, why don't you arrest him?

And if you really are pressed: The digested read, digested ...

A compelling polemic that makes Hitler seem like a straightforward kinda
guy, and will leave Augusto Pinochet and Slobodan Milosevic hoping they get
to do their time in solitary

Quotable Quotes

"In the United States, as you know, we are sympathetic with what you are
trying to do here." - To Augusto Pinochet, June 8, 1976

"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due
to the irresponsibility of its people." - About Chile prior to the CIA overthrow
of the popularly elected government of Salvadore Allende

"Covert action should not be confused with missionary work." - To Congress
in explaining why the US betrayed the Iraqi Kurds in 1975.

Crimes Around the World

East Timor

Kissinger and Ford visited Jakarta in early December, 1975. Less than 48
hours after they left, Indonesia invaded East Timor, beginning a genocidal
campaign that would claim the lives of over 200,000 East Timorese. Philip
Liechty, the CIA desk officer in Jakarta, said, "They came and gave Suharto
the green light. &#352; We were ordered to give the Indonesian military
everything they wanted. I saw all the hard intelligence; the place was a
free-fire zone. Women and children were herded into school buildings that
were set alight - and all because we didn't want some little country being
neutral or leftist at the United Nations."

Chile

The CIA sponsored the 1973 coup against the democratically elected government
of Salvador Allende, funding reactionary military elements and helping them
to draw up lists of over 20,000 people to be assassinated after the coup.
Kissinger was an integral part of this, arguing for the coup as above. He
was also in charge when Chilean secret police murdered Orlando Letelier and
Ronnie Moffit in Washington in 1976.

Cambodia

In 1969, Kissinger and Nixon authorized the "secret" bombing of Cambodia,
a neutral country, followed by the overthrow of its legitimate government
in 1973. "U.S. B-52s pounded Cambodia for 160 consecutive days [in 1973],
dropping more than 240,000 short tons of bombs on rice fields, water buffalo,
villages &#352; and on such troop positions as the guerrillas might
maintain." All of this against a peasant society with no air defense whatsoever.
Estimates are that over 500,000 people were killed, and the country's
agricultural base destroyed, leading to widespread starvation.

Vietnam

Not only did Kissinger and Nixon continue the war for several years, after
saying they wouldn't, they escalated it in many ways. They mined North Vietnam's
harbors and reinstated the bombing of North Vietnam, ordering the massive
bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong, some of the most severe aerial assaults in
history. Their policies resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
Vietnamese, and the destruction of the country.

Kissinger is also responsible for crimes in too many other countries to name,
including Palestine, where his support for Israel enabled them to continue
their occupation of the West Bank and other areas, and Bangladesh, where
Nixon's "tilt" toward Pakistan caused the murder of millions.

'U.S. backed invasion of E.Timor'

SINGAPORE, DEC. 7 (2001). Twenty-six years to the day, the Indonesian dictator,
General Suharto, ordered his troops to invade East Timor with the full backing
of the United States Government, declassified documents posted on the website
of the National Security Archive of the George Washington University show.
Operation Komodo was launched on December 7, 1975, a day after Gen. Suharto
held talks with the then U.S. President, Mr. Gerald Ford, and the powerful
Secretary of State, Dr. Henry Kissinger, in Indonesia.

A declassified ``secret'' cable dated December 6, 1975, shows a confident
Gen. Suharto pushing Mr. Ford and Dr. Kissinger on the East Timor issue,
something which the two leaders have been quiet about. Gen. Suharto: ``....It
is now important to determine what we can do to establish peace and order
for the present and the future in the interest of the security of the area
and for Indonesia. These are some of the considerations that we are now
contemplating. We want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take
rapid or drastic action.``

Mr. Ford: ``We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand
the problem you have and the intentions you have.''

Dr. Kissinger: ``It depends on how we construe it; whether it is in self-defence
or it is a foreign operation. It is important that whatever you do succeeds
quickly. We would be able to influence the reaction in America if whatever
happens after we return....we understand your problem and the need to move
quickly but I am only saying that it would be better if it were done after
we returned....whatever you do, however, we will try to handle in the best
way possible.''

Mr. Ford: ``We recognise that you have a time factor. We have merely expressed
our view from our particular point of view.'' To a question from Dr. Kissinger
whether a long guerrilla war was anticipated in the then Portuguese colonial
possession, Gen. Suharto responded: ``There will probably be a small guerrilla
war....the UDT (Timorese Democratic Union) represents former Government officials
and Fretilin (Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor) represents
former soldiers. They are infected the same is the Portuguese Army with
communism.'' With those words, Gen. Suharto ended the conversation on East
Timor and turned to the issue of ``trade relations'' between Indonesia and
the United States. And, then, there was no stopping Gen. Suharto. He sent
in his troops, who according to one account, killed between 60,000 to 100,000
East Timorese in the period 1975-76 alone.

Both Mr. Ford and Dr. Kissinger seemed to be smarting from the debacle of
Vietnam and the fall of Saigon in April 1975. In an earlier meeting with
Gen. Suharto at Camp David on July 5, 1975, Mr. Ford said: ``Let me say that
we are as firmly committed and interested in Southeast Asia. The events in
Indochina have in no way diminished our interest or commitment in the area.''

The issue of East Timor and possible Indonesian action was raised by the
General at the Camp David meeting. He told Mr. Ford, as per the contents
of another declassified document, ``....The third point I want to raise is
Portuguese decolonisation....with respect to Timor, we support carrying out
decolonisation through the process of self-determination.''

``In ascertaining the views of the Timor people, there are three possibilities:
independence, staying with Portugal, or to join Indonesia. With such a small
territory and no resources, an independent country would hardly be viable.
With Portugal it would be a big burden with Portugal being so far away. If
they want to integrate into Indonesia as an independent nation, that is not
possible because Indonesia is a unitary State. So the only way is to integrate
into Indonesia,'' the document, as seen on the website, said.

So, Gen. Suharto had prepared his ground well before acting as he did. He
had softened the Americans up before making his move. There is little doubt
that the Indonesian dictator, who ruled his country for 32 long years, comes
across as a canny politician, who had no doubts about his course of action.

US Endorsed Indonesia's East Timor Invasion: Secret Documents

Thursday, December 6, 2001 by Agence France Presse

The United States offered full and direct approval to Indonesia's 1975 invasion
of East Timor, a move by then-president Suharto which consigned the territory
to 25 years of oppression, official documents released Thursday show.

The documents prove conclusively for the first time that the United States
gave a 'green light' to the invasion, the opening salvo in an occupation
that cost the lives of up to 200,000 East Timorese.

General Suharto briefed US president Gerald Ford and his secretary of state
Henry Kissinger on his plans for the former Portuguese colony hours before
the invasion, according to documents collected by George Washington University's
National Security Archive.

When Ford and Kissinger called in Jakarta on their way back from a summit
in Beijing on December 6, 1975, Suharto claimed that in the interests of
Asia and regional stability, he had to bring stability to East Timor, to
which Portugal was trying to grant autonomy.

"We want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic
action," Suharto told his visitors, according to a long classified State
Department cable.

Ford replied: "We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We
understand the problem you have and the intentions you have."

Kissinger, who has denied the subject of Timor came up during the talks,
appeared to be concerned about the domestic political implications of an
Indonesian invasion.

"It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly, we would be able
to influence the reaction in America if whatever happens, happens after we
return.

"The president will be back on Monday at 2:00 pm Jakarta time. We understand
your problem and the need to move quickly but I am only saying that it would
be better, if it were done after we returned."

The invasion took place on December 7, the day after the Ford-Suharto meeting.

Kissinger has consistently rejected criticism of the Ford Administration's
conduct on East Timor.

During a launch in 1995 for his book "Diplomacy," Kissinger said at a New
York hotel it was perhaps "regrettable" that for US officials, the implications
of Indonesia's Timor policy were lost in a blizzard of geopolitical issues
following the Vietnam War.

"Timor was never discussed with us when we were in Indonesia," Kissinger
said, according to a transcript of the meeting distributed by the East Timor
Action network -- which advocated independence for East Timor.

"At the airport as we were leaving, the Indonesians told us that they were
going to occupy the Portuguese colony of Timor. To us that did not seem like
a very significant event."

The documents also show that Kissinger was concerned at the use of US weapons
by Indonesia during the East Timor invasion.

By law, the arms could only be used in self defense, but it appears that
Kissinger was concerned mostly on the interpretation of the legislation --
not the use of the weapons.

"It depends on how we construe it, whether it is in self-defense or is a
foreign operation," he is quoted as saying.

The eastern part of the island of Timor, situated north of the Australian
coast, was invaded by Jakarta in 1975 and annexed the following year.

After a 25-year independence campaign and guerrilla war, the territory voted
overwhelmingly for independence in August 1999 in a referendum which triggered
a wave of murderous violence by pro-Jakarta militias.

Restoring Chile's Past by Marc Cooper

Sunday, June 3, 2001 - Los Angeles Times

When the names of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and former U.S.
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger popped up intertwined in the news last
week, it was a magical moment for human rights activists worldwide. For
Kissinger, no doubt, it was something very different: a source of great
displeasure, certainly, and perhaps a harbinger of worse things to come.

Last Monday, an appeals court in Santiago ordered Pinochet to submit to the
humiliation faced by any common criminal: to have his fingerprints and mug
shots, front and profile, taken by the national police. The former general's
defense lawyers are still fighting bitterly to spare him this humiliation.

But the battle was lost even before their defeat last week. For those of
us who survived Pinochet's 1973 military coup and his ensuing 17 bloody years
of dictatorship, and especially for the relatives of those who didn't, the
fight has never been about the narrow issue of hauling the 85-year-old former
general before a police camera or a magistrate's bench. Much more important
has been to correct the historical record and to forever bestow upon Pinochet
and his collaborators their soiled legacy: primary responsibility for the
murder, or "disappearance," of more than 3,100 civilians, and the systematic
torture and jailing of ten of thousands of others. The human rights battle
in Chile transcended individual trials and focused on rescuing and restoring
a collective, historic memory that was nearly expunged by the powerful and
the arrogant.

Which brings us to Kissinger. At roughly the same hour that this latest decision
in the Pinochet case came down, agents of the French police arrived at the
Ritz Hotel in Paris, where Kissinger was participating in a seminar, and
served him with a summons requesting that he testify as a witness in the
investigation of five French citizens who disappeared under Pinochet's rule.

The summons, which carried no legal obligation for Kissinger to appear, was
issued at the request of William Bourdon, a lawyer representing the French
victims. Bourdon insists it is "essential" that the former secretary of state
testify, given the manifold exchanges between the U.S. and Chilean intelligence
services at the time Kissinger was overseeing the U.S. foreign policy apparatus.

Kissinger, who first served as President Richard M. Nixon's national security
advisor and then as secretary of State from 1973 to 1977 under both Nixon
and Gerald R. Ford, was neck deep in U.S. intrigues that led to Pinochet's
ascension. Kissinger was point man in the covert plotting by the U.S. to
destabilize and overthrow the elected Chilean government of Socialist Salvador
Allende, for whom I served as translator in the early 1970s. One of those
plots resulted in the kidnap and murder of Chilean Army Chief of Staff Rene
Schneider. Recently declassified U.S. documents suggest that Kissinger and
the Nixon administration actively supported Pinochet's 1973 coup against
Allende, in which the Chilean president perished, and more than a century
of Chilean democratic rule was ended.

Those same documents further reveal that Kissinger's State Department had
knowledge of "Operation Condor," a scheme concocted by Pinochet and other
South American dictators to coordinate the assassination of opposition leaders.
The most dramatic of those killings took place just blocks from Kissinger's
Foggy Bottom offices in September 1976, when Pinochet's secret police set
off a car bomb in downtown Washington D.C., killing Chilean dissident Orlando
Letelier and his American associate Ronni Moffit.

While Kissinger obviously has much he could tell about these dark chapters,
he ignored the French summons and flew on to Italy. The U.S. Embassy in Paris
told the French court that issued the subpoena that it did not want Kissinger
questioned, and that he had other pressing "obligations." It was not surprising.
As the Chileans like to say, in this world there are Big Dogs and Little
Dogs. And Kissinger is about as big as they get.

But he should neither be cocky nor confident, for his circumstances are starting
to become tantalizingly similar to the discredited dictator he once coddled.
When Chilean courts originally refused to prosecute Pinochet, his victims
turned to international venues for justice. In 1998 Pinochet, while on a
private visit to London, was finally arrested by British police acting on
a warrant issued by crusading Spanish Judge Baltazar Garzon. Garzon has been
investigating the deaths of Spanish citizens in Operation Condor.

In Kissinger's case, it is Parisian Judge Roger Le Loire who has been
investigating the disappearance of his countrymen into the macabre abyss
of Condor, and he has already issued his own warrant for Pinochet's arrest.
Two years ago, Judge Le Loire reportedly sent a request to the Clinton
administration asking permission to question Kissinger, but his request was
ignored. So when Kissinger showed up on his own private visit to Paris last
week, the judge allowed attorney Bourdon to send police to his hotel with
the written request to testify.

In Argentina, yet another magistrate, Federal Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral,
told reporters a few days ago that as part of his own probe into Operation
Condor, he will most likely subpoena Kissinger as either a "defendant or
suspect."

The Argentine judge, nevertheless, went on to muse that getting Kissinger
to actually show up would be "very problematic." After all, Kissinger's place
in history still rests primarily on his reported mastery at shuttle diplomacy,
on his reputation for brilliance as a geo-political strategist, on his lucrative
corporate and media consultancies, and on his winning of the 1973 Nobel Peace
Prize.

But then again, as recently as 1998, Pinochet was also a snarling and fearsome
Big Dog, considered absolutely untouchable by human law. In the face of
overwhelming prima facie evidence of massive crimes, only a single courageous
Chilean judge dared to entertain even the most basic charges against him.
When the general retired from his armed forces command in 1998, the U.S.
press celebrated him (with only casual mention of his human rights record)
as the prescient architect of a pro-American, free-market economic model.
The post-Soviet Russians held him up as an example of inspired anticommunist
governance. His own country lauded him as a "liberator," rewarding him with
the title of senator-for-life.

And yet, a scant three years later, reduced to something more like a whimpering
puppy, stripped of his parliamentary immunity, wanted by a long list of European
courts and under formal indictment in Chile, Pinochet pathetically scampers
to avoid putting inked fingers to paper.

One way or another, the registry of Augusto Pinochet's fingerprints and mug
shots will take place. And the images of the fallen hero that will flash
around the globe will be sure to haunt the midnight nightmares of Henry
Kissinger. As they well should.

Marc Cooper is a contributing editor to the Nation and author of "Pinochet
and Me: A Chilean Anti-Memoir."

U.S. Victims of Chile's Coup: The Uncensored File By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO

New York Times - February 13, 2000

Twenty-six years ago, as the forces of Gen. Augusto Pinochet overthrew the
Socialist government of Salvador Allende, two American supporters of President
Allende were killed in Chile under circumstances that stirred suspicions
of C.I.A. involvement.

American officials categorically denied any role in the young men's deaths,
which were dramatized in the 1982 movie "Missing."

Compelled by the Freedom of Information Act, the government in 1980 released
the results of classified internal investigations, heavily censored in black
ink, that appeared to clear the American and Chilean governments of any
responsibility.

But now, those thick black lines have been stripped away. Spurred by the
arrest of General Pinochet in 1998, President Clinton has ordered the
declassification of "all documents that shed light on human rights abuses,
terrorism and other acts of political violence during and prior to the Pinochet
era in Chile."

Some of those documents make clear for the first time that the State Department
concluded from almost the beginning that the Pinochet government had killed
the men, Charles Horman, 31, and Frank Teruggi, 24. The investigators speculated,
moreover, that the Chileans would not have done so without a green light
from American intelligence.

"U.S. intelligence may have played an unfortunate part in Horman's death,"
said one newly declassified memo. "At best, it was limited to providing or
confirming information that helped motivate his murder by the government
of Chile. At worst, U.S. intelligence was aware the government of Chile saw
Horman in a rather serious light and U.S. officials did nothing to discourage
the logical outcome of government of Chile paranoia."

With most of the blacked-out portions now restored, the documents declassified
by the State Department illustrate how exemptions in the Freedom of Information
Act -- a law that was meant to reduce secrecy -- can be misused.

Two principal exceptions that the department used allow the government to
withhold information on the grounds of national security and executive privilege.
"They're not protecting national security information at all," said Peter
Kornbluh of the nonprofit National Security Archives, which promotes the
declassification of government documents. "Preventing embarrassment is not
an exemption clause."

Even after extensive Senate intelligence committee hearings in the 1970's,
the American role in the overthrow of Mr. Allende remains a matter of dispute
and conjecture. Mr. Kornbluh said that other government agencies responsible
for carrying out United States policy in Chile, including the C.I.A. and
the Pentagon, have so far failed to release key records on the era.

Regarding Mr. Horman's death, Mark Mansfield, a spokesman for the C.I.A.,
recently released a 22-year-old letter denying any role by the agency and
said it would show the public files on the case this spring.

The State Department refused to address questions about the two deaths, saying
few of the people involved in the case still work for the government. The
former officials, most of them retired and scattered around the country,
largely disavow any responsibility for what happened.

Mr. Horman's widow, Joyce, is hoping that enough has changed to finally learn
what really happened to her husband. She is asking for Washington's help
in her quest for an honest explanation of his murder from the new Socialist
government in Chile.

"I want to know who gave the order," said Mrs. Horman, who has never remarried.
"Nobody's held accountable."

Her husband and Mr. Teruggi were friends who belonged to a group of young
left-of-center Americans attracted by Mr. Allende's socialist experiment
in the early 1970's. In Santiago, they worked for a newsletter that reprinted
articles and clippings from American newspapers critical of United States
policy.

When General Pinochet seized power on Sept. 11, 1973, Mr. Horman was at
Viña del Mar, a coastal resort, with Terry Simon, a family friend
from New York who was vacationing in Chile.

Ms. Simon said she and Mr. Horman saw American warships offshore and spoke
to American naval officers stationed in nearby Valparaiso, who appeared elated
at the coup's success. The two interpreted what they saw as proof of American
connivance in the military takeover.

Eager to return to Santiago, they rode back with Capt. Ray E. Davis, chief
of the United States Military Group at the American Embassy, who had been
making his weekly visit to the naval station.

Two days later, as General Pinochet's forces moved to arrest thousands of
people around the country, men in military uniforms abducted Mr. Horman,
ransacking his apartment. His wife, Joyce, was out at the time. She never
saw him again. Ms. Simon searched with Joyce for Mr. Horman and eventually
flew home to New York.

Around the same time, security forces arrested Mr. Teruggi and his roommate,
David Hathaway, at their apartment. They were held at the national stadium
with thousands of other political prisoners. Mr. Teruggi never returned from
his second interrogation.

Mr. Hathaway was released alone and later flew home to the United States.

A friend identified Mr. Teruggi's body in the government morgue. His throat
had been slashed, and he had been shot twice in the head.

The search for Mr. Horman was more tortuous. His father, Edmund, flew in
from New York to help. He and Mr. Horman's wife followed whatever leads they
could, keeping in close touch with the embassy, which supplied escorts and
pressed Mrs. Horman for a list of her husband's friends. Doubting the diplomats'
motives, she says, she never supplied it.

Captain Davis, now 74 and retired, said in a recent interview that he had
nothing to do with the deaths and he appeared offended by the resurgence
of questions about the killings.

He talked of his close ties to the Chilean military during his time there
and said he had welcomed General Pinochet at his home, but was in no position
to demand that Chilean Army commanders answer for the killings, and had not
been ordered to do so. "We weren't down there to cause trouble," he said.
"We sold them weapons."

He called Mr. Teruggi and Mr. Horman "part of the problem" in Chile. "They
were down there handing out pamphlets against the government," he said.

The two men, actually, had been supporting the Allende government, not the
one Captain Davis hoped to see in power. He corrected himself: "against the
people who were trying to do something about it."

The Hormans have long contended that despite the embassy's avowal that it
was doing all it could to find Charles, its officials would merely confirm
information the family had obtained for itself. Taken together, the newly
released documents support their suspicions.

It was not until 1976 that the State Department took a critical look at the
killings. The move was prompted by a disaffected Chilean intelligence officer,
Rafael González, who told reporters that he had witnessed Mr. Horman
being held prisoner by Chile's chief of intelligence.

Mr. González quoted the intelligence chief as saying Mr. Horman "had
to disappear" because he "knew too much," and said a man he presumed was
American was in the room.

Mr. González also described a "cozy relationship" between American
and Chilean intelligence services to destabilize the Allende government,
and said that American operatives had even given their Chilean counterparts
lists of suspected leftists to be rounded up in the first days of a military
takeover.

(In its hearings, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that
the C.I.A. had in fact compiled arrest lists but said it had no evidence
that they were passed to the Chileans. Those lists are among the documents
the C.I.A. has not released.)

Facing pressure from Congress, the State Department ordered two internal
reviews in 1976. The first, completed in August, was carried out by Rudy
V. Fimbres, regional director for Bolivia and Chile in the Bureau of
Inter-American Affairs. The second was conducted by Frederick Smith, a State
Department lawyer, in November and December.

The investigators were permitted to examine only documents either publicly
released or already available in the State Department. Their reviews appeared
to confirm doubts and inconsistencies that American newspapers had already
reported but that State Department officials had repeatedly discredited.

The documents showed that an embassy official had received a tip that Mr.
Horman had already been killed before his father arrived in Chile. That tip
was not followed up.

Instead, embassy officials told Edmund Horman that leftists may have kidnapped
his son, contradicting their own cables home, which quoted neighbors who
said they had witnessed Chilean security forces taking Mr. Horman away.

The internal reviews also questioned the time of Mr. Horman's death, saying
there was no reason to accept the Chilean government's assertion that he
died just before the American Embassy learned of his disappearance.

The Pinochet government had ignored numerous requests from the United States
for an autopsy report on Mr. Horman, the documents show.

One review asked why Captain Davis, who had driven Mr. Horman and Ms. Simon
to Santiago, had taken their registration card from the hotel where they
were staying.

Captain Davis at first denied that he had taken the card, but changed his
mind when read a passage from a letter he wrote to one of the investigators,
now among the declassified documents, mentioning the registration card.

"I don't see why it's important," he said.

The Horman family believes the card was given to the Chilean military, and
tipped them off to the new address of the Hormans, who had moved just a few
days before.

"Based on what we have," the first inquiry concluded, "we are persuaded that
the government of Chile sought Horman and felt threatened enough to order
his immediate execution. The government of Chile might have believed this
American could be killed without negative fall-out from the U.S. government."

The memo said that there was "circumstantial evidence" that the C.I.A. "may
have played an unfortunate part in Horman's death," as well as Mr. Teruggi's.
It also said the State Department had the "responsibility" to refute baseless
allegations and "to proceed against U.S. officials if this is warranted."

The second investigation, completed a month before Gerald Ford's presidency
ended, drew a similar conclusion. It blamed the Chilean government for both
deaths and said it was "difficult to believe" that the Pinochet government
would have carried out the killings without some signal, perhaps even an
inadvertent one, that the deaths would not cause "substantial adverse
consequences" in Washington.

The memo -- to Harry W. Shlaudeman, the assistant secretary of state for
inter-American affairs -- recommended interviewing Mr. González, the
disaffected Chilean intelligence officer, again and going back to the C.I.A.
for a full accounting.

"If an explanation exists," a memo in the investigation said, "it does not
appear in the files and must be sought elsewhere."

But both inquiries appear to have ended there. Mr. Shlaudeman himself recommended
interrogating Mr. González further, even submitting a detailed list
of questions for the purpose that the C.I.A. was allowed to review. But he
dismissed the call for investigating the actions of the C.I.A.

Interviewed recently, Mr. Shlaudeman said that he remembered little about
the issue. "A lot of things have happened since then," he said.

Until jarred loose by General Pinochet's arrest in London in October 1998,
these reports remained largely hidden from the public.

In 1978, State Department officials debated how much of the documents to
show the Horman family, which was then suing the United States government
for "wrongful death," a case that was dismissed "without prejudice," meaning
that it could be reopened.

One official, Frank McNeil, then deputy assistant secretary of state for
inter-American affairs, urged the department to err on the side of greater
disclosure.

"Classification should not be used to prevent embarrassment of government
agencies or officials, which would be the principal reason for withholding
when one gets down to the bone," he said.

Nonetheless, the documents released to the Hormans omitted large swaths of
material on the grounds of national security and executive privilege.

Experts note that executive privilege protects the president's deliberations
with his advisers, in this instance Henry A. Kissinger, who served Presidents
Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford as secretary of state.

Dr. Kissinger said he had never seen the documents or the recommendations
and had been out of the country much of the time. "It's very easy, 30 years
after the event, to be so heroic and to create the impression that one had
nothing else to do except follow one particular case," he said.

"If it were brought to my attention I would have done something."

Mr. Fimbres himself, who is now retired, said recently that he was not surprised
at the State Department's apparent failure to pursue the investigation further.

"Something like this easily goes into the black hole," he explained. "And
everybody watches it go down."